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THE 



CONTEMPORARY EVOLUTION 



OF 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 



The Contemporary Evolution 



OF 



Religious Thought 



IN 



ENGLAND, AMERICA and INDIA, 

BY 

COUNT GOBLET cTALVIELLA, 

PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BRUSSELS AND 
FORMERLY MEMBER OF THE BELGIAN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 



" Notre siecle a vu des mouvements religieux aussi extraordinaires que ceiix d'autrefois, 
mouvements qui ont provoque, au debut autant d'enthusiasme, qui out deja eu, proportion 
§ardee, plus de raartjTS et dont ravenir est encore incertain." — E. Eenan, Les ApCtres. 



TRANSLATED 



BY 



J. MO DEN 



&^ 



NEW YORlv : 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, 

27 & 29, West Twexty-third Street, 



1886 



^ 






i^ 



i/ 



TO 

EMILE DE LAVELEYE, 

who even in the heat of the struggle for the progress 

of the human mind has never separated 

Religion and Liberty. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



When this work first came under my notice, I was 
struck with its calm judicial tone, its fine catholicity of 
spirit, and above all with its comprehensive grasp of 
the bearing of modern science upon ultimate religious 
beliefs. To trace the changes of religious thought and 
note their inter-dependence, their ** evolution," in the 
life of two great races, during the most eventful period 
in the history of the human mind, is certainly no small 
undertaking, and yet it was one which, as it seemed to 
me, the Author had successfully accomplished. And 
although I was fully aware that a large proportion, 
possibly, indeed, the majority of those likely to be 
interested in a question of this kind, were, in all 
probability, able to read the work in the original, it 
still appeared to me and to friends on whose judg- 
ment I relied, that so important a book ought to be 
translated for the sake of those less versed in the 
French language and yet in full sympathy with the 
subject. The present translation is the result, which 
I now offer to the English-speaking public on both 
sides of the Atlantic. 



viii. translator's preface. 

In the performance of my self-imposed task, I have 
sought to reproduce not only the thought, but, as far as 
possible, the spirit of the work. It is for others to say 
how far I have succeeded in this attempt. The one 
great pre-requisite for the task I have certainly possessed 
— sympathy with the subject. This sympathy has ex- 
tended to the historical and critical as well as to the 
more philosophical parts of the book ; but at the same 
time I must confess to having felt a special interest in 
the chapters which treat of Mr. Herbert Spencer's 
philosophy and of the attempt that is being made by 
Mr. Savage and others to reconcile religious faith with 
the Philosophy of Evolution, and to thus base the life 
of the soul upon the consciousness of the Absolute, 
that indestructible rock which the wildest storms of 
scepticism can never wear away. 

As the reader will observe, I have added several 
notes, which in one or two cases are of considerable 
length. It has appeared to me desirable to make at 
least some mention of whatever within my own know- 
ledge was calculated to throw any direct light upon the 
text of the work, or to bring its critical examination 
down to a later date. Hence the notes in reference to 
certain new books ; to the Spencer- Harrison contro- 
versy ; to the most recent phases of the Brahmo Somaj 
movement ; and to other matters likely to prove of in- 
terest to the reader or give greater value to the book. 
My having made no reference to Dr. Martineau's re- 
cently published work — " Types of Ethical Theory" — 
may seem either an exception or an omission on this 
head. But the book in question appeared too late for 



IX. 



mention in those chapters where the high position and 
extensive influence of its author are considered ; and 
then again, though a great and most important work, 
it has but an indirect bearing upon the evolution of 
religious thought and does not come, therefore, within 
the strictly legitimate scope of this book. 

Those who read with interest what is said in these 
pages on the progressive modification and development 
of religious thought in England, America, and India, 
may possibly regret that the Author did not at least 
extend the scope of the work to Germany. This regret, 
indeed, was expressed to me, the other day, by Professor 
Pfleiderer, of Berlin, who spoke most highly of what 
Count d'Alviella has actually accomplished. It may be 
remarked, however, that the book would not have 
possessed, in such case, the unity which now charac- 
terises it, and that the field is still open for the applica- 
tion of a similar method of critical observation to the 
various Protestant countries of the Continent — Ger- 
many, Holland, Switzerland, and Sweden. 

To the merely superficial observer of the present 
condition of religious thought there often comes a feel- 
ing of dread or of exultation, according as he is at the 
positive or negative stage of belief and clings to religion 
or would see it destroyed. But he who looks around 
upon the religious opinions of his fellows in the spirit 
of this book or ponders over the changes of belief it 
describes, will find no cause for either despondency or 
sceptical triumph. He will see that though the form of 
religion changes the substance remains ; and he will be 
led to believe, or strengthened in the conviction, that 



TRANSLATORS PREFACE. 



religion can no more die out of the heart of man, in his 
race capacity, than gravitation can disappear from the 
physical world. As the soul's perception of the under- 
lying Reality, as its consciousness of relationship, and 
affinity to the mysterious Power in whose Immensity 
the Space-universe is embosomed like a mote in the 
sunbeam, it is not only an abiding but the grandest, 
because the ideal and governing factor in man's spiritual 
being. Chained to the phenomenal by his intellect, it 
is in and through religion alone that he is brought into 
practical relationship with the Absolute. It is true he 
becomes conscious of Transcendent Existence by the 
processes of the intellect, but it is only in love and 
aspiration — only in the consciousness of that '' Eternal 
Mystery" to which Herbert Spencer ascribes religion 
or from the sense of absolute dependence to which 
Schliermacher traced it, or, indeed, from the perception 
of God in the moral law as taught by Kant, that the 
human blends with the Divine, and the soul of man 
passes into the infinite and partakes of its rest and 
fulness. To every open mind the universe with its 
wondrous commingling of atoms and mysterious on- 
flowing instants, is a revelation of the Eternal in Space 
and Time. And with the thought that thus perceives 
the Supreme Being, behind the world, there comes the 
feeling, the ''emotional consciousness" which is a per- 
sonal realization of Him. For reverence is born of 
what the mind recognises as great, vast, sublime. And 
in this way the soul passes from the visible to the 
invisible, from the phenomenal to the real. — But not 
simply as the correlative of great thoughts is the Divine 
life given, for it flows into every young soul and en- 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. XI. 



shrines itself in opinions that seem absolutely true when 
erroneous, and inspires a confidence that claims fullest 
knowledge where knowledge is impossible. Innumer- 
able souls thus live before God — souls that could never 
reach Him if clear intellectual vision were needed to do 
so. Nothing, indeed, is more marvellous than this 
second or higher form of instinct which makes even 
intellectual error subservient to the continuance of 
spiritual truth in the human heart. Thus the imperish- 
able treasure of the souFs life is always contained in an 
earthen vessel supplied by the intellect. Moulded, 
fashioned and conditioned according to the needs of 
the mind in all its multiform stages of progress, that is 
to say enshrined in a thousand mythological or theo- 
logical forms, this sense of God the Infinite manifests 
itself as faith, as religion ; and men cling to it in certain 
phases of their growth as a mother clings to her child, 
and at other times they spurn it as a worthless thing 
because an awakening mind has shown them it is not 
identical with some special form of belief, as they have 
earnestly or even passionately taken it to be. 

Now the preception of this truth is the key that un- 
locks every system of faith and discloses the spiritual 
power which may be associated with the crudest 
opinions, showing us that though absolute truth is not 
the heritage of man the harmony of sincerity is made 
absolute and suffices for the life of the soul. Hence it 
enables us to understand the origin and influence of the 
great religions of the past as they are revealed to us by 
Comparative Theology, and it will enable the reader to 
rightly estimate the changes of religious thought which 



xii. translator's preface. 

are taking place to-day in our midst — changes which 
this work describes and attempts to account for by 
carrying the great law of Evolution into that domain 
of human experience which was so long regarded as a 
separate province of the mind, but is now seen to be 
nothing more than its bright upper and heavenward 
side. 

Leicester, July, 1885, 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 
INTRODUCTION I 



PART I. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY IN ENGLAND SINCE THE RE- 
FORMATION 13 

CHAPTER II. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION AND THE CRISIS OF THEISM 35 

CHAPTER III. 

THE PROGRESS OF THOUGHT IN ORTHODOX PROTESTANISM ... 57 

CHAPTER IV. 

ENGLISH UNITARIANISM ... ... ... ... ... ... 81 

CHAPTER V. 

RATIONALISTIC CONGREGATIONS BEYOND THE PALE OF CHRIS- 
TIANITY 103 



XIV. CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VI. 

PAGE 
COMTISM AND SECULARISM 1 29 



PART II. 



CHAPTER Vn. 

THE GENESIS OF UNITARIANISM IN THE UNITED STATES ... 153 

CHAPTER Vin. 

THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT — EMERSON AND PARKER ... 1 67 

CHAPTER IX. 

FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS 1 83 

CHAPTER X. 

COSMISM AND TPIE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION ... ' ... ... 209 



PART III. 



CHAPTER XL 

THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA ... ... ... ... 225 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ ... ... 24 1 



CONTENTS. XV. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

PAGE 
THE ECLECTICISM OF THE BRAHMA DHARMA IN ITS STRUGGLE 

WITH HINDU MYSTICISM 257 



CHAPTER XIV. 

SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION w. ... ... 273 

CHAPTER XV. 

BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA 29 1 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 




INTRODUCTION, 



Unattached to any Church, but in moral and intel- 
lectual sympathy with all who, either as representatives 
of a religious organization or otherwise, are seeking to 
reconcile religion and reason, I have been engaged, for 
several years past, in studying the various attempts 
which are being made by the English, the Americans, 
and the Hindus, to solve what Professor Tyndall calls 
''The problem of problems of our age." It is the 
result of these studies that I now offer to the public. 

I could have wished to extend my work to all those 
countries where an attempt is also being made to ensure 
a rational satisfaction to the religious sentiment ; but, 
taking into consideration the magnitude of such an 
attempt, I have thought it wise to restrict myself 
to those peoples whom special circumstances have 
permitted me to more closely observe. There is, 
moreover, an exceptional interest in studying the con- 
flict betw^een religion and science among the Anglo- 
Saxon nations, who, on both sides of the Atlantic, are 
regarded as forming at once the most religious and the 
most practical race of the modern world. 

Those who read this work to the end will see how it 
is that, without destroying the unity of the subject, I 
have been able to connect, with a sketch of religious 
progress in England and the United States, an expo- 



2 INTRODUCTION. 

sition of the religious reform now being carried on in 
India by the different schools of Brahmoism. There 
is, in short, a movement of emancipation going on 
among the Hindus, which, while retaining its origin- 
ality in the presence of European influences, represents 
none the less the indirect action of Anglo-Saxon culture 
on the spirit of the old Hindu philosophy. 

It is in no sectarian or proselytizing spirit that this 
work is written. I have been influenced neither by a 
desire to secure acceptance for any one of the systems 
of belief which I have sought to explain, nor by an 
assumption that I am capable of offering any new 
solution of the problem. My sole aim has been to 
furnish some few materials for the history of Rationalism 
in the second half of the nineteenth century. I have, 
therefore, specially applied myself to collecting facts 
and to summarizing documents, adding, at the same 
time, my own views on the ground of general criticism. 

I may even go so far as to say that I should be 
greatly embarrassed if, at the outset, it were necessary 
for me to decide between the relative claims of the 
religious doctrines which are described in this volume. 
Whenever I have watched the working of the different 
systems on the spot, whenever I have found myself in 
personal relation with their principal representatives, or 
have been able to study them In the works of their 
most authoritative interpreters, I have been struck 
much more forcibly by the unity of principle pervad- 
ing them than by the diversity of form they possess. 

Why not avow it, even at the risk of being taxed 
with indifference or ever-changing opinions by those 



INTRODUCTION. 



who do not understand me ? I was little short of feeling 
rnyself a Unitarian when with Dr. Martineau in England, 
or with Mr. Savage in the United States ; a Theist with 
Mr. Voysey ; a Transcendentalist, at Boston with 
Theodore Parker ; a believer in the Divinity of the 
Cosmos, at New Bedford with Mr. Potter ; a Humani- 
tarian, at New York with Mr. Adler ; and even a 
Brahmoist, at Calcutta with the leaders of the Brahmo 
Somaj. To say the least, if I had been born in any one 
of these systems of belief, in all probability, I should 
have remained in it, because it would, have presented 
no barrier to my moral and intellectual development. 

I may say, therefore, with Montaigne : "C'est icy un 
livre de bonne foy, lecteur." But I should also add that 
it is not only a book written in good faith, but also one 
that has resulted from sympathy with the subject. 
When a man is closely connected with the struggles of 
political factions in his own country, he feels a certain 
pleasure in transporting himself into a calmer and 
healthier atmosphere, where he may express himself 
free from the reservations or the party spirit of electoral 
and parliamentary controversy. All the writers who 
have considered the progress of the conflict between 
the modern spirit and Roman orthodoxy, from the 
higher levels of thought — as Renan, Renouvier, de 
Laveleye, Castelar, and Mariano — have pointed out the 
disadvantages, and even the dangers which accompany 
any form of destruction in religious matters, without a 
corresponding process of reconstruction. This consider- 
ation, grave as it is, would not influence me, if it were 
a question of defending the essential conditions of our 



INTRODUCTION. 



civilization, the independence of individual judgment^ 
the claims of science or the exercise of public liberty, 
against the assumptions of any church. But however 
resolved I may be to persevere in such a course as this, 
I cannot, in the presence of the disappointments and 
embarrassments which it reserves for us, restrain a feel- 
ing of envy for the wisdom of those more fortunate 
peoples with whom attempts at religious reconstruction 
go hand In hand with the progress of dogmatic demoli- 
tion. Hence, though I have attempted to give to this 
work an impartial and impersonal character, it bears the 
impress of a large and perhaps the best part of my own 
individuality. 

Some time since, Mr. Gladstone, in describing the 
various currents of religious thought which prevail In 
the modern world, divided them into two classes, accord- 
ing as their adherents admit or deny the moral govern- 
ment of Providence and the sanctions of a future llfe.^ In 
the first of these groups he placed the partlzans of Papal 
infallibility, together with those wha attribute to their 
Church a divine origin (Episcopalians, Old Catholics 
and members of the Greek Church) as well as the various 
Evangelical sects, the Unlversallsts, the Unitarians, and 
also the majority of Thelsts. In the second division — 
characterized as the negative school — he classed Sceptics, 
Atheists, Agnostics, Secularists, Pantheists, Positivlsts, 
and the believers In a revived Paganism. 

Now this classification Is perfectly justifiable for those 
who occupy, as Mr. Gladstone does, a definite phllo- 

I. The Courses of Religions Thotight, by the Right Hon. W, E. Gladstone, in 
tHe Contemporary Review, of June, 1876. 



INTRODUCTION. 



sophlcal stand-point. But on the more general ground 
where I have taken up a position, it is not so much the 
nature of the religious ideas, which has to be considered, 
as their flexibility, that is to say the extent to which 
those who accept them admit the right of free inquiry 
in relation to their adoption or rejection. I came to the 
conclusion, therefore, that the best course I could persue, 
would be to describe in succession the condition of the 
various churches and schools of religious thought by 
arranging them, as far as possible, in the order of de- 
creasing dogmatic opinion. On the other hand, since 
my purpose is less that of describing any given religious 
organization than of tracing the course of its evolution, 
I have also deemed it useless to dwell upon such facts as 
the eccentricities of certain American sects, the practices 
of the Salvation Army and the like, which have often 
occupied public attention, but which, as it seems to me, 
mark either a retrograde tendency or a deviation from 
the general course of religious development. 

I have thought it desirable to commence the first part 
of the work with a sketch of the progress which free 
inquiry has made in England since the reign of Henry 
the Eighth ; in seeing by this means how the present 
has sprung from the past, the reader will be the better 
able to anticipate how the future will flow out of the 
present. 

Nor has it seemed to me less indispensable to devote 
a special chapter to a description of the influence exer- 
cised upon the religious sentiment by the scientific 
philosophy of the age, which is everywhere tending to 
predominate in the higher strata of modern thought. 



INTRODUCTION. 



It will be thus seen that the present conflict between 
religion and reason, is not confined to the peoples of our 
continent ; while at the same time it will become 
apparent how the leading minds of the Anglo-Saxon 
race have set about solving this great problem, without 
sacrificing the respective claims of either of the two 
parties in the conflict. 

The chapters which follow contain an exposition of 
the progress of religious thought in the various denom- 
inations of Great Britain, from the Anglican Church to 
orthodox Positivism and indeed to the rudimentary wor- 
ship of the Secularists, passing in review the evangelical 
sects, the Unitarians, the pure Theists and other ration- 
alistic communions. 

The second part of the work is principally devoted 
to the United States. I explain in it how the Unitarian 
movement sprang up there from the original Puritan 
orthodoxy by a gradual but by no means illogical evolu- 
tion, and how, after having passed through the phase of 
Transcendentalism, it has produced numerous organiza- 
tions which border on the limits of pure Theism or 
even extend ' to Agnosticism, some indeed realizing, 
to a certain extent, the type of a Church of Humanity 
without any dogmatic barriers whatever, and others 
attaching themselves more or less closely to the recent 
philosophy of evolution. 

The object of the third part is to show how contact 
with European culture has produced in India a break- 
ing up of the old systems of Polytheism on the one 
hand, and on the other an eclectic Theism, due to a 
synthesis of the religious progress made by the two 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

races. But I also endeavour, at the same time, to show 
how the mysticism, always latent in the Hindu char- 
acter, threatens to paralyse all attempts to start the 
mind of that people along the less demonstrative course 
of European religious life. I have further taken into 
consideration what are likely to be the general results, 
in the future, of this action and re-action between the 
two principal branches of the great Aryan family. 

Finally, a concluding chapter contains a statement of 
what modern criticism has left of the old beliefs, and 
seeks to foreshadow the kind of religious re-construction 
for which this residuum of belief may yet serve in the 
fa ture.^ 

If in our day the religious sentiment is often regarded 
as incapable of a new season of bloom, and even des- 
tined to a more or less early disappearance, it is because 
the present conflict between faith and free inquiry is 
held to be fundamental and definitive. Religion, it is 
urged, pre-supposes the supernatural, which reason ex- 
cludes. It is necessary, however, to come to a clear 
understanding as to the meaning of the terms employed 
in such a statement as this. If by the supernatural the 
anti-natural is meant, that is to say a violation of the 
order revealed in nature, in a word the miraculous, then 
I readily admit that it must be henceforth abandoned 
as utterly irreconcileable with the requirements of every 

I. Several chapters of this book have appeared, at various intervals, in the form 
of articles published in the Revue des Deux Mondes. But it will be readily under- 
stood that I have not been able to unite them in a continuous narrative, like this 
work, without considerable modifications, in order to embody such information as 
may have been necessary, respecting the changes which are always taking place in 
the factors of religious evolution. The chapters which relate to England and India 
have been, as it were, completely re-written. 



INTRODUCTION. 



system of philosophical thought. But if the term super- 
natural simply stands for the super-sensible, or what is 
above nature, or, indeed, to speak more correctly, what 
is above reason, then there is nothing in science which 
can proscribe it. M. Littre himself, speaking in the 
name of the Positive Philosophy, declares that it is 
perfectly legitimate for anyone to transport himself into 
the "transrationaV if he is so disposed, in order to form 
there such ideas respecting the origin and purpose of 
things as may please him best ; and Mr. Herbert Spencer 
does not hesitate to affirm that the conception of an 
Omnipresent Power transcending the limits of know- 
ledge is the supreme outcome both of science and 
religion.^ 

In order to see that reason and religion are not 
necessarily in antagonism, it will suffice to remember 
that they belong to two different provinces of the human 
mind. Philosophy, making use of the materials fur- 
nished by observation, formulates a conception of the 
universe. This conception the religious sentiment takes 
possession of, in order to dramatize, color and idealize it ; 
and, while seeking in it the symbol of the Unknowable, 
which remains as the residiuum of all synthetic philo- 
sophy, we also project into it a human element, which 
sends back to us. an echo of our aspirations towards the 
Infinite and the Absolute. Doubtless, a conflict can- 
not fail to arise between free inquiry and what appears 
to be the religious sentiment as soon as any such 
dramatized conception of the Cosmos ceases to corres- 
pond with the requirements of science, which may have 

I. Littre, Transrationalism in the Revue Positive of January, 1880. Herbert 
Spencer, First Principles^ Chapter v. 



INTRODUCTION. 



gradually become hostile to it. Still, in reality, the 
hostility, under these circumstances, is simply between 
two scientific conceptions, the more ancient of which, 
having become antiquated by the progress of know- 
ledge, has not been rejected by religion. Now, this 
elimination is only a question of time. Experience 
teaches us that, after a greater or less period of oscilla- 
tion and groping about for a new support, the religious 
sentiment always succeeds in freeing itself from its 
antiquated forms, and adopts an explanation of the 
universe more in conformity with the revelations of 
science and the aspirations of contemporary society. 

It is certainly quite possible that the dogmatic ele- 
ment in religion may have to play a more and more 
restricted part in the future. A strong tendency is daily 
gaining ground, especially in the Protestant churches, 
to no longer look for the test of religion in this or that 
confession of faith, but in obedience to what the cele- 
brated English critic, Mr. Matthew Arnold, has spoken 
of as '*A Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteous- 
ness." When God is thus reduced to an ideal, of which 
the moral and physical order constitutes the permanent 
manifestation, the first duty that presents itself to us is 
to search for the laws by which the Divinity reveals 
His action — a course dictated by the very attributes of 
reason ; and the second is to adapt our conduct to those 
laws — and it is just here that religion most unquestion- 
ably retains a great mission in the development of 
humanity. 

It will perhaps be objected that this is to confound 
religion with morality? Morality, I answer, addresses 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

itself to the judgment only ; it is therefore inadequately- 
armed, as Auguste Comte so clearly understood, to 
struggle against passion and selfishness in the domain 
of sentiment and imagination. Ethics, philosophy, 
sociology, or whatever else we please to call the appli- 
cation of reason to the discovery of the laws of our indi- 
vidual destiny, and the conditions of our collective 
existence, may reveal to us the practical requirements 
of duty ; but this sense of duty needs to be animated 
with life by religion, that is to say realized in all its 
fulness. 

Von Hartman has said that religion is the popular 
conception of the ideal. He should have called it, 
however, its living conception, for regarded from 
this point of view, there is no one who does not need 
religion, and thus understood, the religious sentiment 
is not only rational, it is also as indestructible as reason 
itself. 

I may add that the chief thing for general peace of 
mind and the progress of ideas, is less that of attracting 
the Churches to Rationalism, than to the adoption of 
liberal principles ; less that of getting them to accept 
views in harmony with modern science, than of inducing 
them to recognize the absolute right of the individual to 
think for himself, and thus winning them over to a 
belief in the constant possibility of religious progress. 

It is undeniable that we are now passing through an 
acute crisis of religious belief. If we do not wish to 
render it more intense and prolong its duration, it is 
imperative upon us to strip ourselves of every prejudice 
and put aside all intolerance, as well with regard to 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

existing beliefs as in respect to those opinions offered 
in place of them. This attitude of mind, indeed, is not 
only commanded by the necessities of the present 
transition, it recommends itself to us, moreover, as the 
result of the entire movement of contemporary thought. 
Each day the conviction is growing stronger — on the 
one hand that the human mind cannot reach the supreme 
reality except by means of imperfect symbolism — on 
the other, that all the forms of religious thought are 
the product of natural causes embodying, side by side 
with unavoidable errors, an element of truth, and that 
they are subject to the law of progress. 

It is this that the Platonic philosopher Maximus of 
Tyre caught a glimpse of, as early as the Second century 
of our era, when he characterized all the forms of faith 
as powerless efforts directed towards the same lofty ideal. 
It is this that has been placed in the clearest light by 
one of the most recent and at the same time most ad- 
vanced sciences of the age — Comparative Theology. 

If the present work should have no other result than 
the confirmation of this double position, which is in- 
separable from all impartial, sympathetic and fruitful 
criticism, I shall not consider that I have written in 
vain. 



PART I, 



CHAPTER I. 



THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY IN ENGLAND 
SINCE THE REFORMATION. 



Sunday in England — A picture of religious life in London — Number and variety of 
sects— Odd pragtices — Open-air preaching — The teaching thus communicated — 
— The political character of the reform effected by Henry VIII. — The elements 
which favoured its extension among the masses — The influence of foreign refugees : 
Ochino, Acontius and Corrano — Persecution of the Dissenters under the Tudors 
and Stuarts — The Latitudinarians : Chillingworth and Jeremy Taylor — Relation 
between the increase of sects and the progress of toleration — The Puritan move- 
ment in the seventeenth century — Development of Latitudinarian ideas under the 
Restoration — Secularization of philosophy and science — Locke and the sensational 
school — Attempts to base the validity of Revelation on the authenticity of miracles 
— English Deism : Lord Herbert of Cherbury and his successors — The decline of 
this school — The general predominance of Utilitarianism in the theology of the 
eighteenth century — The mystical reaction of the Wesleyans — Coleridge and 
German idealism — The application of symbolism to the interpretation of Christian 
dogmas — The convergence of scientific and historical researches towards the 
negation of the supernatural — Progress of Rationalism among the sects open to 
theological change — Contemporary Theism — Professor F. W. Newman and Miss 
F. P. Cobbe — Growth of religious liberty in British legislation — The slow but 
steady progress of reform — The parliamentary oath and the blasphemy laws. 



The majority of foreigners who visit England seem to regard Sunday 
as a day on which all the wheels of social existence are stopped. It 
would be more correct to say, that, with the English, secular life gives 
place everywhere to reHgious life on one day of the week. And how- 
ever little we attempt to examine this new phase of activity, we shall 
find in it, especially in the large towns, an inexhaustible source of 
original impressions and fruitful observations. It is, indeed, a necessary 
study for anyone who would get at the root of the English character, 
and judge of the British nation under all its aspects. 

The variety and exuberance of religious phenomena presented by 
London to-day are such as have not been witnessed since the time 
when sophists and theologians encumbered the streets of Alexandria. 



14 THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 

The London Post Office Directory of 1882 gives a list of 1,231 places 
of worship belonging to about thirty distinct sects ;i but as this list 
refers merely to congregations domiciled in their own buildings, it 
must be supplemented by all the religious organizations which hold 
their meetings in private rooms, as well as by the services which are 
held in the open air, in such places as the parks, the public squares, 
and even under the arches of the railway viaducts.2 

It will be seen that people of all tastes and temperaments can find 
abundant satisfaction for their religious wants. If they are fond of 
imposing ceremonies and a gorgeous ritual, combining all the resources 
of aesthetics, the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Church, the 
Ritualistic and Irvingite Churches vie with each other in attracting 
them by their pomp and symbolism. If they desire to connect their 
religious aspirations with a respect for free inquiry, they have only to 
make a choice from a whole series of congregations, whose beliefs 
extend from Christian Rationalism to religious services without a 
God. If they wish to see curious phenomena or extraordinary spec- 
tacles, they have but to follow some crowd which is burying itself in 
a hall with bare walls and no other fittings than a platform and a 
number of benches. It is, perhaps, a meeting of the Tabernacle 
Ranters which they have entered, whose eccentricity will show itself 
in innumerable Hallelujahs ! as a sign of their appreciation of the 
prayers and discourse of their improvised preacher ; or it may be our 
visitors have fallen in with a gathering of those Shakers or Jumpers 
who, in the midst of the English life of this nineteenth century, recall 
the contortions of St. Medard and' the Dancing Dervishes of the East. 
If they care to venture, in company with one of the initiated, into a 
sort of cavern, where there reigns a mysterious obscurity, they will 
perhaps hear the existence of God denied between the singing of two 
mystic hymns, but they will thus have an opportunity of holding 
communion with the spirits of Jesus and Mahommed, if not of calling 
forth the shades of their grandmothers. 

Here stands an immense Tabernacle, which resembles a theatre. 
You will find in it from five to six thousand persons fixing their looks 

1. The Directory for 1884 shows an increase of 40 in the two years. — Translator. 

2. Paris contains 169 places of worship, taking into account the congregations 
in private buildings and the dissenting sects : that is to say, one place of worship 
for every 17,000 inhabitants, whereas London possesses one for about every 2,000. 



THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 15 

in a meditative attitude upon a minister, who, assisted by two deacons, 
is plunging successively into a deep tank of clear water young men 
clothed in a kind of dressing-gown and young girls in long bathing- 
gowns of white flannel. Elsewhere, you may see worshippers of both 
sexes begin the communion service by exchanging the kiss of peace. 
Or, again, in another place, some fifty worthy people are to be seen 
sitting with a placid and becoming countenance and waiting patiently 
for the influence of the Holy Spirit. Your presence will not in any 
way disturb their pious ecstasy ; a proper bearing is all that is required 
of you, and then the worshippers will not even appear to perceive 
your intrusion. 

Suddenly a flourish of loud trumpet-like notes bursts forth in the 
neighbouring street. Music, and military music, on the Sunday ! 
It is a detachment of the Salvation Army marching to its barracks, 
with officers of the fair as well as the stronger sex at its head, singing 
hymns to put the Devil to flight and firing circulars and pamphlets at 
the miserable sinners who have been attracted by the sound of the 
band. 

At length it is evening, and, the services being over, the public 
thoroughfares are thronged with worshippers who have poured forth 
from innumerable chapels, whose gables are, in many cases, in a line 
with the froilts of the houses. There is nothing, however, disorderly 
about this large and motley crowed which lines the principal streets. 
These latter are dimly lighted by long rows of lamps that are eclipsed 
on the week-days by the gas from the shop-windows. No vehicle 
disturbs the pedestrians. Here and there some gin-palace or shop 
for the sale of eatables throws a dazzling ray of light from its half- 
open door. By the side of the foot-ways hand-carts or barrows are 
wheeled along, and fruit-sellers deal out their goods from them by 
the light of a flickering candle, which throws over the countenance 
of the purchaser a reflection not unlike that seen in Rembrandt's 
pictures. 

At each corner of the street, groups may be seen around some 
open-air orator. Here, a Methodist preacher, with a long beard and 
extravagant gestures, is trying to excite the religious feelings of his 
auditors by pathetic appeals, garnished with edifying anecdotes. Or, 
here again, two representatives of rival sects are confounding each 



16 THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 

Other in turn by Biblical arguments, with a degree of calmness and 
moderation not always to be witnessed in Parliamentary debates. 
Sometimes a whole group, at the bidding of its improvised minister, 
will sing a hymn, whose modulated words drown the noise of the 
crowd. Gradually all disperse; the streets become empty, and 
the policeman, the emblem of the State which never rests, is soon 
in sole possession of the great sleeping town. 

As to myself, it was almost entirely as an idler in search of novelty 
that, some ten years ago, I undertook a series of visits to various 
London congregations. I certainly came into contact with more than 
one extravagance and more than one absurdity, in carrying out this 
purpose; but the smile which may have been brought to my lips, 
quickly died away from a feeling of general respect for the sincerity 
of conviction which everywhere showed itself, and of special sympathy 
for the efforts of those who in various ways were labouring to bring 
the religious sentiment into harmony with the general progress of 
civilization. At all events it is to this first comprehensive view of the 
innumerable subdivisions of English Protestantism that I am indebted 
for some idea of the importance of the great religious reform inaugur- 
ated by Luther, and as yet incomplete. 

The introduction of Protestantism into England was notoriously a 
work of political policy rather than of religious conviction. It is 
true the Roman clergy had rendered themselves as odious to the 
masses by their abuses as they had done to the Crown by their pre- 
tensions, while the old leaven of the Lollards, which was fermenting 
still in the heart of the nation, could not fail to make the people 
favourable to a movement that promised to realize all the hopes and 
aspirations of Wycliff — that Protestant of the Reformation's dawn. 
But whilst the popular element inclined towards extreme views of the 
Reformation, the official element of the nation, — that is to say the 
King, the Court, the judicial functionaries, and the members of the 
Universities, — desired to retain a sort of Catholicism without the 
Pope, in which the Sovereign would exercise supreme authority over 
the religious affairs of the nation. Thus the Thirty-nine Articles, 
which have formed since 1562 the constitutional basis of the English 
Church, embody all the doctrines contained in the canon of Scripture, 
as well as the Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian creeds. The 



THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 17 

ritual was minutely drawn up in the Book of Common Prayer^ which 
substituted the national idiom for the Latin language ; and an eager- 
ness was shown to maintain the whole of the ancient ecclesiastical 
organization, with the simple difference, for the most part, that the 
King took the place of the Pope at the head of the hierarchy.^ The 
new Church maintained the assumption of its predecessor as to Apos- 
tolical succession, and there was nothing, not even the title of 
"Catholic," which it did not lay claim to in face of the Roman 
Church. 

In point of fact, the human conscience had merely exchanged 
tyrants by this shifting of supremacy. Every established form of 
religion implies State heresies, which the Civil Power must repress as 
infringements of public order. The celebrated Parliamentary leader, 
Pym, who took so active a part in the fall of Charles I., does not 
profess in this matter any other ideas than those of Henry VIII. 
" It belongs to Parliaments," said he, " to establish true religion and 
to punish false. "2 But if, in the accomplishment of this duty, the 
State sometimes acts as cruelly as the Church itself, it is never as 
suspicious in its search for heresies nor as rigorous in their repression ; 
it seldom seeks to penetrate to the tribunal of conscience, but contents 
itself generally with a nominal submission. The Reformation, more- 
over, could not escape in England, any more than elsewhere, the 
application of its central principle, which consisted of setting up 
the authority of the individual conscience; and from the very fact 
that it represented a compromise between the extreme opinions of 
the period, it had to resist opposite tendencies, alike hostile to free 
inquiry, the one arising from the literal interpretation of a traditional 
text, the other consisting of the assumed infallibility of a living 
authority. In short, the Reformation, having commenced among the 
enlightened classes and being closely bound up with the life of 
the governing aristocracy, had to maintain, at one and the same 
time, respect for individual culture and a certain repugnance for all 
kinds of fanaticism. 

I. Henry VIII. once caused three Lutherans and four Catholics to be drawn to 
the place of execution on the same hurdle, because they were all guilty of denying 
his supremacy. The only difference was that the former were hanged and the latter 
burned. — Vide, Neal, History of the Puritans. 

2. J. J. Tayler. A Retrospect of the Religious Life of England. 2nd Edition. 
London, 1876. Page Ii6. 

C 



18 THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 

During the reign of Edward VI., England offered an asylum to all 
who had been exiled from their native land, on religious grounds, 
without regard to sect or race. As early as 1549, indeed. Arch- 
bishop Cranmer, who had already invited from the Continent a 
certain number of scholars and theologians of the reformed school, 
to aid in the re-organization of the English Universities, constituted 
a Church for foreigners, which was shortly afterwards divided into 
four branches, formed respectively of Flemish, Walloons, Italians, 
and Spaniards. The liberal spirit which had already shown itself in 
this small community, especially among the exiles of Italian and 
Spanish origin, 1 could not. fail to strongly re-act, were it only by the 
works of their theologians, upon the religious ideas of those with 
whom they had found safety and independence. 

Among the first Italian Protestants who took refuge in England, in 
or about the year 1547, was an old Capucine monk from Sienna, 
Bernard Ochino, who had largely contributed to the progress of the 
Reformation in his own country. Greatly in favour at the Court 
during the reign of Edward VI., he was obliged to flee into Switzer- 
land at the death of that monarch, and shortly afterwards being 
proscribed from all Protestant communities, in consequence of his 
Socinian opinions, he died, in a state of wretchedness, in a small 
village of Moravia, at the age of 76. But, though banished from 
England, he left behind him numerous sympathisers, and more than 
one person in the foreign Churches, both able and willing to carry on 
his work — notably Jacques Acontius, a lay member of the Italian 

I. Among the Italians the Reformation had assumed a more intellectual direction 
than elsewhere, and this need not be a matter of astonishment to those who bear in 
mind the social atmosphere created by the Renaissance. The dogma of the Trinity, 
that great mystery of orthodox Christianity, had first of all to bear the assault of 
rational criticism. In 1531, a Spanish Doctor, Michel Servetus, who had studied 
at the University of Padua, and whose tragic end is well known, wrote that the 
nature of God is indivisable, and that the persons of the Trinity are simply modes 
of the divine activity. This species of Pantheism, which was re-stated by Sabellius, 
spread rapidly through the conventicles held during the next twenty years in the 
north of Italy, with the more or less disguised toleration of the Venetian Republic. 
It is even stated that, about 1546, some forty persons belonging to the most en- 
lightened classes of Society, formed at Vicence an Association for the restoration 
of "Christian Monotheism." It seemed as if Italian Protestantism was about to 
extend the Reformation principles to their utmost limits from the first, when there 
suddenly burst forth that storm of re-action which swept it clean away from the 
whole Peninsula. 



THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 19 

Church, who, in drawing up a list of the doctrines necessary for 
salvation, omitted to inscribe therein the doctrine of the Trinity, and 
Antoine Corrano, the minister of the Spanish Church, who, suspended 
from his functions on account of his extra-Trinitarian beliefs, was 
none the less made a canon of St. Paul's.^ 

It was doubtless not judicious to attack the official dogmas too 
openly — to pass on, for instance, from extra-Trinitarian to anti- 
Trinitarian opposition — since it was possible that the State, once 
roused, would speedily show the difference, and that, too, with all 
the cruelty of the age. Witness those unhappy Anabaptists or Arians, 
who, from George Van Parris, in 155 1, to Edward Wightman, in 161 1, 
perished — as Servetus had done, and for the same crime — in flames 
kindled by Protestant hands. But these intermittent persecutions 
were powerless to arrest the progress of ideas, and the ashes of the 
last Socinian martyrs were scarcely cool before Arminian doctrines — 
those near neighbours of Arianism — had already begun to leaven the 
opinions of the Anglican clergy. 

The Dutch sect of Arminians or Remonstrants did not confine 
themselves, as the reader may be aware, to a simple rejection of the 
dogma of predestination and that of the absolute equality of the three 
Divine Persons ; they also raised the standard of religious toleration 
against the narrowness of Calvinistic theologians. Meanwhile, their 
broader views were brought into England by a former chaplain of the 
English Embassy in Holland, John Hales, who had been present at 
the discussion of the Council of Dordrecht, and who, forcibly im- 
pressed by the reasoning of Episcopius, had even at that time, to 
use his own expression, " bid John Calvin good night," Having con- 
nected himself, on his return to England, with one of the most 
distinguished men of the day, Lord Falkland — " whose house," says 
an author of that period, " looked like the University itself by the 
company that was always found there" — he formed, with Chillingworth, 
Jeremy Taylor, and some other young clergymen, the nucleus of what 
is still known as the Latitudinarian party in the English Church. 

I. G. Bonet-Maury. Des Origines du Christianisme Unitaire chez les Anglais . 
I. Vol. Paris, Fishbacher. 1881. (This work has been translated into English 
by the Rev. E. P. Hall, and published by the British and Foreign Unitarian 
Association. — Translator^ 



20 THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 

The position taken up by John Hales — a very bold one for the 
period — was that sincere error is not a crime, and that, consequently, 
" differences of opinion " should not be repressed by force. Even 
more : he laid down the principle which was destined to make liberal 
Protestantism triumphant. " If we were not," said he, in one of his 
sermons, *' so ready to launch anathemas at each other, we should be 
united in heart, though separated in expression of opinion, which would 
be to the advantage of all. It is unity of spirit in the bonds of peace, 
and not identity of conceptions, which the Holy Spirit demands."^ 

Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants^ published in 1637, and a 
few years later Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying^ were perhaps 
even more serviceable to the cause of toleration and rehgious progress 
than the sermons of John Hales. Still, both these authors accepted 
the absolute authority of the Bible. "The Bible, and the Bible only, 
is the religion of Protestants." Such is the very sentence which 
Chillingworth uses as the foundation of his argument when he attacks 
the confessions of faith arbitrarily imposed either by churches or 
individual theologians. But all three insist on this point : that the 
sense of the Scriptures is to be freely determined by individual 
judgment. Chillingworth's contention was that those who are mis- 
taken and those who are not mistaken in matters of doctrine, may be 
alike saved. And he was so persuaded of the goodness of God, he 
said, that if all the errors charged against Protestants in the entire 
world could be concentrated in himself, he should be less shocked at 
all these errors united than at the idea of asking forgiveness for them. 

Jeremy Taylor, on his part, shows the necessity of a constant 
recourse to the authority of individual reason. The authority of 
reason he held to be the best judge. Each man must determine, by 
and for himself, the nature of the truth revealed in the Scriptures. 
God, he declared, had no right to demand from us perfect freedom 
from error, but He had the right to demand that we should seek to 
avoid it. He who did not resolve to seek truth for himself, virtually 
gave himself up with indifference to the acceptance of truth or error. 
Might we not suppose these to be the words of Channing, uttered 
some two centuries afterwards ? 

Among the factors which contributed to the progress of religious 
liberty in Eng land, we must recognize, side by side with the Lati- 

I. Tulloch Rational Theology in England in the Seventeenth Century. 



THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 21 

tudinarian tendencies which thus showed themselves in the EstabUshed 
Church, the multitude of sects which, from the time of Edward VI., 
strove to carry out, beyond the pale of Anglicanism, the logical evo- 
lution of the Protestant Reformation. Within fifty years, indeed, 
English Protestantism passed through, in a reverse direction, so to 
speak, all the stages which the Christian Church, as a whole, had 
required several centuries to cross in order to attain its complete 
development in the Roman hierarchy. It was, in the first place, the 
rejection of the Papal supremacy which gave birth to the Anglican 
Church. Afterwards, those proscribed by Queen Mary, who, during 
their exile, had come into contact with the Calvinists of the Continent, 
clamoured during the reign of Elizabeth for the introduction of the 
Presbyterian organization, which placed the government of the Church 
in assembHes of ministers and elders. The Presbyterians, however, 
merely sought to reform the National Church by the suppression of 
the Episcopate and the Liturgy. But the Independents soon arose, 
and they, repulsing all interference of the Civil Power in questions of 
ecclesiastical organization, demanded absolute freedom for the indi- 
vidual congregations, as well in their relations to each other as in 
their common relation to the State. At length, the Anabaptists, the 
Quakers, the Seekers, the " Fifth Monarchy Men," and the other 
sects which sprang up during the troubles of the first Revolution, 
endeavoured to suppress all kinds of ecclesiastical functions in order 
to give free scope to individual inspiration, in imitation of those 
primitive assemblies which the Acts of the Apostles show us under 
the influence of the Holy Spirit.^ 

This curious manifestation of Atavism finds an explanation in the 
increasing desire to literally follow the Scriptures, not only in matters 
of doctrine, but also in the method of ecclesiastical organization. 
This exclusive respect for the letter of Scripture had, it must be 
admitted, nothing in common with the spirit of free inquiry, nor even 
with the principle of religious toleration ; for, as a matter of fact, the 
greater part of the sects which sprang from the Puritan movement, 
have shown themselves more opposed to the progress of Rationalism 
than the Anglican Church. But, in asserting their claim to the right 
of existence, they thereby strongly promoted the general liberty. 

I. J. J. Tayler. A Retrospect of the Religious Life of England. Page 126. 



22 THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 

By their very multiplicity they could not fail to develop the habit of 
constant recourse to individual judgment in matters of belief. For at 
least a certain number of their congregations, indeed, the absence of 
any standard of doctrine or discipline, together with the centrifugal 
force which removed them more widely every day from traditional 
Christianity, could not fail to insensibly facilitate their transition to 
opinions more and more advanced and to soon lead them, both in 
logic and in boldness, beyond the restrained audacity of the Latitudi- 
narian party, whom the Articles of the Anglican Church held in check. 
It is these circumstances which gave birth to Unitarianism. 

The persecutions directed against the Dissenters by the two first 
Stuarts merely served to multiply the number of sects and to call forth 
the energy of their adherents. At about the time of the earlier 
Revolution, Thomas Edwards, the author of the Gangr^na, stated 
that there were in England 176 distinct sects; and when, after the 
passing triumph of the "Saints' Republic," England returned into 
the fold of royalty and Anglicanism, the Dissenters remained none 
the less an element which had to be considered in all the future 
religious, intellectual, and political movements of the English nation. 

At the Restoration, an outbreak of licence succeeded the excess of 
social rigour which prevailed in the preceding period, as is usually 
the case after every too abrupt or exaggerated reform. This re-action, 
of which Hobbes was the principal representative in philosophy, could 
not be other than favourable to the cause of intellectual liberty. 
Hobbes, it is true, after having destroyed the very foundation of all 
religion, of all morality, and of all liberty, entrusted to the Sovereign 
the absolute right to determine the religious opinions, as well as the 
public and private duties, of his subjects. But, in the very heart of 
the Established Church, the Latitudinarian party had resumed their 
work of emancipation, with the Glanvils, the Hookers, the Berkeleys, 
and other theologians of the same school, to whom Mr. Lecky, an 
author by no means favourable, as a rule, to the Anglican Church, 
attributes the honour of having been the true founders of religious 
liberty in England. ^ 

But we must not forget that, as early as the seventeenth century, 

the direction of the intellectual movement ceases to belong exclusively 

I. W. Lecky. History of the Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe. 
Vol. II., page 72. 



THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 23 

to the theologians. First of all, it is Lord Bacon who establishes the 
experimental or inductive method, and thus opens the way to the 
Sensational School. Then comes Locke, who seeks to explain all 
mental phenomena by the impressions made on the senses and by the 
association of ideas. Lord Bacon carefully separated religion from 
philosophy ; Locke, however, did nothing of the sort, but even claimed 
to submit the truth of Christianity to the test of his method. In his 
celebrated work on The Reasonableness of Christianity^ he maintains 
that the human mind, shut up, as it is, in the phenomenal world, 
cannot of itself attain to the full possession of religious truth. This 
truth mustj therefore, be communicated to us by an external revelation. 
But by what means are we to recognize the authenticity of this super- 
natural communication ? By miraculous signs, Locke answers, whose 
historical occurrence cannot be called in question. Now this con- 
dition, he adds, is exactly met by the Christian Revelation, which 
rests on the fulfilment of prophecy and the history of miracles. Still, 
it is for reason to examine these credentials, and to determine, by 
the aid of its common processes, the exact meaning and extent of 
the revelation. 

Now there is no difficulty to seize upon the weak point of this 
argument, which entrusts the proof of supernatural Christianity to 
historical documents. But criticism, which was then merely in its 
infancy, especially in its application to religious history, justified the 
illusion that exegesis might become the most valuable ally of Biblical 
orthodoxy. The Bible, up to that time, had been regarded among 
Protestants as the very word of God, addressing itself directly to the 
souls of believers. No one would have previously dared to apply to 
the Pentateuch, to the Prophecies, the Gospels, or even to the Acts 
of the Apostles, the critical process employed in the study of a pro- 
fane author ; and it would have been regarded as sacrilege, not only 
to discuss the date of their composition or the personality of their 
authors or compilers, but even to take into account the part played 
by the surrounding circumstances of time, place, passion, and 
prejudice. By dissipating this atmosphere of traditional inviola- 
bility in the interest of religious truth, Locke paved the way for the 
great critical movement which was destined, not, indeed, to confirm 
the miracles of the Bible, as the author of The Reasonableness of 



24 THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 

Christianity sincerely supposed, but, on the other hand, to eliminate 
the supernatural from Christianity, while, at the same time, it con- 
ceded the fullest respect for its moral and spiritual elements. 

Side by side with Locke and the Sensational School, but in this 
case beyond the lines of Christianity, the Deistical School took up 
the defence of natural, as against revealed, religion. This movement 
originated with Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who has been called the 
Father of English Deism. Its doctrines were based entirely on 
the beliefs which its author considered common to the whole human 
race. For instance : the existence of God ; the act of worship em- 
bodied in prayer \ the forgiveness of sin by repentance \ and, finally, 
the immortality of the soul, with the sanctions of a future life. This 
was to apply to religion itself the synthetic method which Acontius 
had adopted in order to obtain the fundamental and essential doc- 
trines of Christianity from the beliefs common to different churches ; 
only, in opposition to Acontius, Lord Herbert did not hesitate to 
threaten with damnation those who refused to accept his five articles 
of faith. Illustrating another inconsistency, more than one example 
of which is to be met with in the history of the human mind, this 
philosopher, who denied the Biblical revelation, believed he had 
himself been honoured by a special revelation; and he was accustomed 
to relate, in all sincerity, that, having one day cast himself on his 
knees to ask God whether he should do right in publishing his book, 
he received the divine i7?iprimatur^ by means of a sweet and distinct 
sound, which bore no resemblance to any of the sounds of earth. 

It was this doctrine of a natural Monotheism which was developed 
successively by Blount, Shaftesbury, Woolston, Tindal, Chubb, Collins, 
and Bolingbroke. Some of these writers openly attacked the different 
forms of traditional Christianity ; others, however, simply sought to 
develop the principles of Deism in the direction of the special philo- 
sophical schools to which they belonged. But whatever favour their 
works may have enjoyed among the superior classes, it was chiefly 
the negative side of their doctrines which gained them adherents, 
and we have no knowledge of any attempt to organize a system of 
worship on the basis proposed by Lord Herbert or his successors.^ 

I. It is impossible to regard in a serious light the description which Collins gives 
us in his PantheisHcoit of a society which dined together periodically in order to 
treat of religious opinions at dessert, while they at the same time made use of an 



THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY, 25 

Besides, nothing could well be less calculated to excite religious 
feeling than this cold Theodicy, which made of God a skilful mechanic, 
external to the world and unnecessary for sustaining the order of 
things. In France, where Deism was imported by Voltaire and de- 
veloped by Rousseau, it furnished a philosophy for the movement 
which was coming into existence against all the abuses of the old 
regime, and it may be said, in spite of the failure of Robespierre, and 
later, of the Theophilanthropists who attempted to organize it into a 
system of worship, that it was the real religion of the French Revo- 
lution. But reduced to maintaining its ground in England as a pure 
speculation, it soon succumbed under the double attack of positive 
religion and critical philosophy. By the second third of the century 
it had fallen into a state of rapid decay, and gradually all the repre- 
sentatives of British science or literature, of any distinction, took 
up a position among its adversaries. ^ For whilst Middleton, Butler, 
and Paley called to the support of a more or less liberalized theology, 
all the resources of criticism, science, and contemporary metaphysics, 
Hume developed his universal scepticism, the penetrating logic of 
which was as merciless in its bearing upon the claims of Deism as it 
was in relation to traditional Christianity. With Gibbon the last 
representative of the school founded by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 
was destined to disappear. 

Never has there seemed to be more complete harmony between 
reason and Christianity than during the second half of the eighteenth 
century. Locke held undisputed sway both as a theologian and a 
philosopher. Faith presented itself as no longer due to a restriction 
of free inquiry, but as a consequence of scientific demonstration. 
Theology had exclusive recourse to the method of induction, the 
theory of innate ideas was proscribed, and intuition discredited as 
tainted with mysticism. It was by external observation that hence- 
forth the existence of God and the action of Providence were to be 
demonstrated. It was only by making an appeal to the historical 
proofs supplied by miracles that any attempt was to be made to estab- 
lish the validity of the Christian revelation, the immortality of the 
soul, and the obligations of morality. 

esoteric liturgy (v. Ed. Sayous — Les Deistes Anglais et le Christianisme depuis Toland 
jusqu' a Chubb. I. Vol. Paris, Fishbacher. 1882. 

I. H. Taine. Histoire de la litterature Anglaise, t. iii, page 160. 



26 THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 

But, at the same time, it would be impossible to find a better 
example to show that the triumph of theology is not always that of 
religion. All true spirituality seems wanting at this period. In the 
eyes of the ruling class, worship is nothing more than a kind of 
police arrangement, the official church is simply an institution to 
regulate public morals; and no one is scandalized by seeing its 
ministers adopt the common-place life of the country squire. Its 
prelates, moreover, only occupy themselves in securing the favour of 
the Court, and in playing the wit at the expense of the last of the 
Deists. The enlightened section of the public have come to regard 
any manifestation of religious fervour as a morbid symptom, or, at 
least, as a sign of bad taste. The same feeling extends even to the 
Dissenting sects who, having attained to a position of relative freedom, 
are the prey of a sort of religious Positivism equally removed from 
indifference and enthusiasm.^ 

This state of things arose from the fact that though the Sensational 
theology answered to the utilitarian tendencies of the age, it could 
create none of the emotional and idealistic manifestations which play 
so large a part in the genesis of the religious sentiment. As early as 
the first half of the century, Wesley and Whitfield had given the 
signal of a re-action by bringing into prominence the mystical aspects 
of Christianity and by specially insisting upon the greatness of the 
sacrifice accomplished by Jesus. Still, their religious method, which 
substituted the living and concrete figure of the traditional Christ for 
cold metaphysical abstractions, had, from its deficiency in rational 
elements, but a slight hold upon the educated classes who had formed 
their convictions in the school of Locke. It was only, indeed, at the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, when Coleridge had attacked 
Sensationalism with new weapons, that a system' better fitted to satisfy 
the deeper aspirations of the religious consciousness was seen to spring 
up among liberal theologians. 

Coleridge, who was the son of an Anglican clergyman, passed 
through Unitarianism before taking orders in the Established Church. 
But he was, above all things, an adept in German idealism, which he 
had had an opportunity of studying during his residence at the 

I. Thomas Erskine May. Constitutional History of England. Vol. III., 
page 82. 



THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 27 

different German Universities in 1799, and which he did not cease 
to teach and spread in England for more than twenty-five years. 
The influence of his writings on the succeeding generation was 
enormous; it can only, indeed, be compared with that of Carlyle, 
that grand and fantastic genius, who, in turn, has aimed such rude 
thrusts at the Sensational theology of the preceding century. 

The philosophical system of Coleridge rests entirely on the dis- 
tinction between reason and understanding. Adopting the theory of 
Kant, that man possesses in reason, thus regarded, a special organ 
for placing himself in contact with the absolute realities of the moral 
and spiritual world, he concluded therefrom that God has not limited 
Himself to entering into relations with mankind by a merely local 
and temporary revelation, but that He never ceases to speak to us 
directly by the voice of conscience, which is the interpreter of pure 
reason. Not that Coleridge called in question the Biblical revelation, 
but it was the conformity of this revelation with the absolute laws of 
religion and morality, which seemed to him the best proof of its 
authenticity. 

The consequences of this doctrine will be readily seen. On the 
one hand, by recognizing in every man a divine element, it allowed 
the fundamental dogma of the Incarnation to be no longer regarded 
as a local and unique occurrence, and one very difficult of reconcilia- 
tion with the most characteristic attributes of the Divine Nature, but 
as a symbol of permanent and universal communion between God 
and humanity. On the other hand, it brought back the attention of 
the churches from the previously absorbing thought of a future life to 
a consideration of the best means for improving the present world. 
And, further, by regarding miracles as a possible consequence rather 
than as a necessary proof of divine activity, it tended to make reason, 
and not Scripture, the supreme standard of truth. The historical 
details of the Biblical tradition thus fell back into secondary import- 
ance ; so much so, that even the verification of defects and errors in 
the compilation of the sacred books could not henceforth weaken the 
great moral and religious truths of Christianity. 

During the ages of religious fervour, it was to Scripture that an 
appeal was made for the solution of all scientific problems. The 
most striking instance of this naive faith is, perhaps, the celebrated 



28 THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 

treatise, written in the sixth century, by the monk, Cosmas, in order 
to prove, among other applications of the Bible to geography, that 
the earth could only be a parallelogram having a length equal to twice 
its breadth, for this irrefragable ]:eason that such was the form of the 
Mosaic Tabernacle, and that St. Paul speaks somewhere of the earth 
as a tabernacle. Gradually, however, the rights of science were 
timidly advanced, in cases where it neither directly nor indirectly con- 
flicted with theology. At a later period, an absolute independence 
was supposed to be simultaneously conceded to the two rivals ; not, 
indeed, by giving to each of them a separate sphere, but by attributing 
to them, respectively, the supremacy according as a question was 
regarded from a scientific or a religious point of view. The same indi- 
vidual, for instance, might admit, as a scientist, that the earth revolved 
round the sun; as a religious man, that the sun turned round the 
earth. The disciples of Descartes, again, had a right to maintain, as 
philosophers, that the mechanism of the universe is to be explained 
by exclusively physical causes, and as Christians, that they did not 
believe anything of the kind. Still such contradictions, however un- 
consciously they may occur, are too clear a violation of the unity of 
the human mind not to prove detrimental to orthodoxy, as soon as 
the progress of knowledge begins to converge towards the negation of 
the supernatural. 

Now, since the first blow which Capernicus gave to the cosmogony 
of the Bible, there has never ceased to be a growing antagonism 
between the affirmations of science and the letter of Revelation. The 
earth, which the Scriptures had made the centre of creation and the 
place where God had thought it right to offer himself up as a sacrifice 
for the redemption of humanity, saw itself suddenly relegated, by the 
marvellous generalizations of the Newtons and Laplaces, to the rank 
of a secondary satellite, — a grain of cosmic dust lost in the immensity 
of the universe. Then came the science of Geology, which, in the 
hands of the Playfairs and the Lyells, not only overthrew the received 
interpretation of Gensis, but at the same time destroyed the central 
doctrine of Calvinism, by carrying back the ravages of suffering and 
death far beyond the first sin of the first man. Concurrently with 
these changes, parallel discoveries took place in all branches of posi- 
tive knowledge, which led to an indefinite extension in the action of 



THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 29 

the general and permanent laws of nature, and reduced to this extent 
the sphere given up to accidental rule and, consequently, to miracu- 
lous agencies. Even in the question of religion itself, for instance, 
there is not a system of belief whose formation, growth, decay, and 
disappearance has not been explained as due to natural causes by a 
new science, which has thus given to all forms of faith a place in the 
intellectual and moral development of humanity, and, as a matter of 
course, has reduced historical Christianity to a mere stage or passing 
form of our religious evolution. 

Such is the undoubted conclusion to which impartial researches in 
, Biblical criticism have led. Locke thought he had found in exegesis 
the best support for a belief in the supernatural origin of Christianity. 
The Tiibingen school began the demolition of this castle in the air, 
and it may be confidently affirmed that there is hardly a stone of it 
left standing. Not only have the miracles and prophecy lost all cre- 
dence from a historical point of view, but, further, the authenticity of 
the Gospels has shared the fate of the tradition which attributes the 
Penteteuch to Moses. And just as it has become a settled conviction 
that the introduction of Monotheism among the Hebrews was of late 
occurrence, so critics have succeeded in discovering, in the most vener- 
able documents of the primitive church, traces of the Greek and 
Oriental elements which entered into the formation of Christianity. 
Thus, while Revelation found itself in antagonism with the increasing 
progress of the Natural Sciences, it saw itself deprived of the testi- 
mony of history, which remained, to a certain extent, its last citadel. 

Once introduced into England, this double current, which is, at 
the same time, critical and affirmative, could not fail to exercise a 
profound influence upon the philosophical and religious ideas of the 
most enlightened minds. Even Protestant theology could not escape 
its action. " The tendencies of scientific and of historical research 
being thus in the same direction," says Dr. Martineau, one of the 
most distinguished and impartial writers upon religious subjects in 
England,^ " and meeting with no adequate counteraction from con- 
servative resistance, a general disposition is manifested among churches 
open to theologic change, no longer to lay stress on the miraculous 

I. The Introduction to the 2nd Edition of J. J. Tayler's Retrospect of the 
Religious Life of England^ page 36. 



30 THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 

elements of early Christian tradition, to regard them as rather weaken- 
ing than strengthening the authority of the narrative, and to frame a 
conception of the origin of Christianity which shall not be dependent 
on their abjective reality. . . . Even, however, among the con- 
servative theologians a significant silence respecting the 'signs and 
wonders ' on which they (the stories of the bodily resurrection and 
ascension of Christ) rest indicates that the old emphatic appeal to 
them is known to be out of keeping with the feeling of the time, and 
can no longer be hopefully urged." For a long time past, the theo- 
logians who are still faithful to the old beliefs have sought to avoid 
embarrassment by the hypothesis that miracles do not necessarily 
imply the violation of natural laws : that they may simply be the result 
of a higher law hitherto undiscovered by the investigations of science. 
This is what Mr. Lecky calls meeting the Rationalists half way.^ 

These compromises, however, of which Coleridge had set the 
example, could not arrest the progress of those who, like Carlyle, 
desired to apply the method of Rationalism with rigorous logical 
consistency. As early as the second third of this century, German 
idealism produced in England a school which openly rejected Reve- 
lation in favour of the principle of pure Theism. Between the 
Deists of the eighteenth century and the Theists of the nineteenth 
there is this great difference, however, that while the first formulated 
a mechanical conception of the universe, and made of God a Being 
external to creation, the second make the principle of divine im- 
manence in the universe the basis of religion, and consequently 
regard reason and conscience as alike organs of the divine in man. 

The principal representatives of these doctrines in England to-day 
are Professor F. W. Newman and Miss F. Power Cobbe. " Their 
pure Theism," says Dr. Martineau,2 " is so noble a product of the 
most capable thought and truest inward experience that, if it only 
were an historic instead of a private gift, and could come to men as 
inspiration instead of reason, it would regenerate the world." 

Professor Newman's work, The Soul: its Sorrows and Aspirations^ 
although published thirty years ago, has remained the standard expo- 
sition of the methods and doctrines which characterise English Theism. 

1. Lecky. History of Rationalism in Europe. Vol. II., page 178. 

2. Introduction to the 2nd Edition of the Rev. J. J. Tayler's work, page 38. 



THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 31 

As to Miss Cobbe, who has equally given herself up to the claims of 
subjective idealism, she has known how to unite a power of philo- 
sophical reasoning, rare enough in her sex, with a liveliness of 
imagination and a warmth of sentiment which give to her style a 
special and peculiar charm. 

This school, which owes its origin to Kant, through the inter- 
mediate agency of Coleridge and Carlyle, remains to-day as young 
and vigorous as ever. Based upon pure reason, freed from all com- 
promise with revealed theology, and accepting a metaphysical system 
which is sufficiently in harmony with the positive sciences to follow 
the current of their discoveries without inconsistency, and even some- 
times to draw new arguments from them, it tends more and more to 
take the lead -in resisting the encroachments of those recently pro- 
pounded doctrines which are shaking the foundation of natural 
religion and even attacking the principles hitherto regarded as the 
basis of philosophy and of morals. To say the least, it possesses 
the great merit of having been the first to demonstrate, by the mere 
fact of its existence, the possibility of reconciling the religious senti- 
ment, and even a certain degree of mysticism, with the unlimited 
exercise of free inquiry. 

The emancipation thus gradually secured in the domain of opinion 
could not fail to produce a corresponding effect in the laws of the land. 
From the earliest period of the Reformation, men of generous senti- 
ments had raised their voices in favour of the largest religious toleration. 
But freedom of religious opinion was a conception too much in oppo- 
sition to the received ideas of the age for it to have the least chance 
of making itself heard by the Government and, above all, by the 
people themselves. Among the various Protestant nations, England 
is perhaps the one in which this liberty was first practically enjoyed, 
but it is also that in which the principle has been slowest to secure 
recognition as a question of legal right — an inevitable result of that 
condition of things in which the subjection of the Church to the 
State makes of all heresy, according to the theory of Hobbes, an act 
of insubordination to the institutions of the country. 

It is hardly two centuries ago since the statute, De haeretico com- 
burendOj was abrogated. At the Restoration, all meetings of more 
than five persons for the purpose of worship, except at the Parish 



32 THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY, 

Church, were prohibited under pain of imprisonment and trans- 
portation. No Nonconformist minister could approach a town or 
municipal borough within a radius of five miles ; no Dissenter could 
teach even in a private school. The crime of heresy grew blacker in 
proportion as the heretic deviated from the official type in the matter 
of doctrine and worship. The profession of Unitarianism was regarded 
as blasphemy ; a Roman Catholic could neither acquire nor inherit 
property without abjuring his faith. Towards the end of the Restora- 
tion period fifteen hundred Quakers perished in prison. The forms 
and ceremonies of the State, as a civil institution, were identified 
with the sacraments of the Established Church. No citizen could 
hold any public office if he had not taken the communion during the 
year, and, to avoid deception in this matter, a law was passed for 
punishing Dissenters who might present themselves at the communion 
service of an Anglican Church, i 

A relaxation of these rigours commenced at the Revolution of 1688, 
when Anglicans and Dissenters joined hand in hand to overthrow the 
throne of the Stuarts. Still it was only at about the end of last cen- 
tury that England resolutely entered upon the course of toleration. 
To-day, as Lord Coleridge recently stated, the acquittal of Mr. 
Bradlaugh, who had been prosecuted on the charge of blasphemy for 
his attacks upon Christianity,^ has made it clear that the Christian 
religion has ceased to be identical with the laws of the country. 

All denominations have now secured the legal right to existence, as 
well as to the possession of their churches, schools, and the like, as 
ordinary property, while they are perfectly free to spread their views 
by teaching and preaching. No one can be compelled to take part in 

I. Thomas Erskine May. The Constitutional History of England. Vol. III., 
page 76. 

2. Messrs. Foote, Ramsey, and Kemp have been less fortunate in an analogous 
case. But it appears that the caricatures published in the Freethinker were possessed 
of a bearing which distinguishes them completely from the attacks made upon 
Christianity by Mr. Bradlaugh. Thus Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant both stated, 
in the course of the trial, that they had ceased to take part in the propagandism of 
the Freethinker horn November, 1881, in consequence of the coarse nature of its 
drawings (v. Inquirer of the 28th of April, 1883). Still it may be objected that if 
Messrs. Foote, Ramsey, and Kemp were really guilty of a breach of public morals, 
they should have been prosecuted by an appeal to the Acts which punish such an 
offence, and not by calling into play superannuated Statutes, which misleads the 
public mind with regard to the nature of the offence, and also as to the motives 
which ensured its condemnation. 



THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 33 

any form of religious worship or even to assist in its maintenance. 
The Universities have been prohibited, except as regards degrees con- 
firmed by the theological faculty, from making attendance at their 
lectures or the sitting for degrefes, dependent upon any kind of theo- 
logical opinions. All distinctively denominational teaching has been 
excluded from the Board or rate-supported schools; and voluntary 
schools, subject to State inspection, can no longer obtain grants except 
when their religious teaching is made optional by the use of the 
" conscience clause," and given beyond the hours of ordinary school 
work. The State, in its civil capacity, has provided for the registra- 
tion of births and marriages apart from the intervention of the parish 
clergyman, and even without any religious service whatever. The 
Burials' question, which is complicated by the claims of ecclesiastical 
property, received a partial solution in the Bill of 1879, which con- 
ceded to Dissenters the right of burial in the parish church-yards by 
their own ministers ; and everything leads to the belief that, before 
long, the matter will be definitively settled by the removal of all dis- 
tinction between the consecrated and the un-consecrated portions of 
the cemeteries. And, finally, not only is the form of a man's religious 
belief no longer permitted to influence his rights as a citizen, but, 
further, with the exception that Atheists are still excluded from Parlia- 
ment, all civil and military posts are tenable, irrespective of whether 
those who hold them profess any religious opinions or not. 

Those reforms — which the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and 
other modern Constitutions of the same type, have sketched out with 
a clear and general import in a few lines — represent in England the 
difficult and complex labour of several generations. There is not one 
of these measures which before becoming law, was not successively 
rejected in several parliamentary sessions, if not in several Parliaments, 
by insensibly decreasing majorities. There is not one of them which 
was not introduced as a partial measure, applicable first to one sect 
and then to another, till at last by a continued extension it assumed 
the character of a general principle. 

This characteristic method of English legislation is specially illus- 
trated in the question of the ParHamentary Oath. In France, in 
Belgium, and indeed in the majority of constitutional states, the invo- 
cation of the divinity, as yet retained or but partly suppressed in 
judicial affairs, has long since disappeared from the political oath. 



34 THE PROGRESS OF FREE INQUIRY. 

The English, on the other hand, have, for practical purposes, readily 
conceded to witnesses in the courts of justice, the right to pledge 
themselves to truth by the oath of their choice, or even to confine 
themselves simply to a solemn affirmation. As regards the Parliamen- 
tary Oath, however, they have only consented to widen the terms of 
the formula by small extensions, made after long periods of resistance 
and under the continued pressure of public opinion. 

Thus, for instance, the proposal to abolish the Test Act, which 
rigidly excluded every Dissenter from the Legislature by imposing upon 
him an oath involving adhesion to the Established Church, was first 
made in Parliament during the session of 1787. It was not till 1828, 
however, that the measure was passed for the relief of Protestant 
Nonconformists; and not till the following year for the Roman 
Catholics. Henceforth Parliament was accessible to any one who was 
willing to swear allegiance to the Crown on the true faith of a Christian. 
In 1833, the election of Mr. Pease led to the right being granted to 
the Quakers, and the Moravian Brethren with other separatists, to 
substitute a simple affirmation for the oath, which is what English 
Liberals claim to-day on behalf of those who cannot conscientiously 
make a direct or indirect appeal to the Deity. As early as 1830 a 
special form of the Oath was demanded on behalf of the Jews ; it was 
not obtained, however, till 1858, after Parliament had several times 
' annulled the election of Mr. Lionel de Rothschild, who was each time 
re-elected by the city of London. The " true faith of a Christian " did 
not survive this new breach, and a readjustment of the general formula, 
which was adopted in 1866, extended its application to all Theists, 
whatever their special opinions respecting the Supreme Being. 

The reader will remember the conditions under which the question 
has been raised afresh by the return of Mr. Bradlaugh to Parliament. 
Personal objections to the junior member for Northampton, have 
doubtless had much influence in the rejection of the Bill which pro- 
posed to substitute a simple declaration of allegiance for the existing 
Oath. But when we call to mind the precedents of Parliamentary 
history, and when at the same time we reflect upon the insignificant 
majority which threw out Mr. Gladstone's Affirmation Bill, we may 
safely predict that many sessions of Parliament will not pass before this 
last barrier to liberty of conscience has been removed from the Legis- 
lature of England. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION AND THE CRISIS 
OF THEISM. 



What is at stake in the conflict between religion and science — The idea of develop- 
ment in contemporary philosophy — Increasing generality of the laws which 
explain the dififerent groups of phenomena — Darwin and his Theory of the origin 
of species — Stuart Mill and the relativity of human knowledge — The union of 
this doctrine with evolution — Herbert Spencer's postulate: the Persistence of 
Force — Extension of the evolution hypothesis to all orders of phenomena — The 
affirmation of the Unknowable as an absolute and unconditioned Reality — The 
relation of this doctrine to the religious sentiment — Mr. Gladstone's humorous 
remark — The theory of evolution in antagonism with Christian orthodoxy — 
Huxley's Lay Sermons — Tyndall's Belfast address — Rapid progress of evolution — 
The Agnostics — The religion of the future, according to the author of Ecce Homo 
— Scientific attempts to reconcile the essential principles of Theism with the 
doctrine of evolution — Dr. Carpenter's theory referring force to volition— Mr. W. 
Graham and finality in evolution — The opinions of Matthew Arnold and Balfour 
Stuart — Distinction between the scientific theory of evolution and its philosophical 
application — The metaphysical systems which, according to Mr. J. Sully, may be 
legitimately grafted upon the theory of evolution — Theological attempts to main- 
tain the principles of Theism with the sacrifice of the First Cause — Dr. Martineau's 
thesis — Religious opinions in the different strata of English society. 



Up to the present, we have seen the attacks of reason merely directed 
against the intervention of the supernatural, whilst the verdict of philo- 
sophy and history in condemning the pretensions of Revealed Religion, 
has had no other result than the confirmation of Natural Religion. 
But at about the middle of this century a current of ideas was set in 
motion, which threatens to sweep away the very foundations of Theism. 
No one can close his eyes to the evidence of this crisis, which relates 
to questions incomparably more important for the moral and religious 
future of society, than "the authenticity of the prophecies, and the 
credibility of the miracles, the direct or the indirect inspiration of the 
Scriptures, the possibility of the Incarnation, and the necessity for 
Redemption. What is now at stake is the personality, the wisdom, 
the goodness, and the power of God ; the reality of a First and a Final 
Cause, the immortaUty and, indeed, the very existence of the soul, the 
freedom of the will and the idea of duty. 



36 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 

These beliefs have doubtless long been proof against all attacks : 
the Materialism of Hobbes, the Sensationalism of Condillac, the Scep- 
ticism of Hume, and the Atheism of Feuerbach have in turn blunted 
their arms in assaults upon them. But now it is a question of a com- 
batant incomparably more redoubtable, inasmuch indeed as this new 
enemy presents himself exclusively in the guise of scientific armour. 
I am speaking here of the philosophy of evolution. 

Thus, as M. Taine remarks with regard to Carlyle, in his fine work 
on English Literature, we are living in a current of ideas, which 
having its source in Germany, impregnates to-day the philosophy, the 
literature and the science of the whole western civilization. This is 
the tendency to introduce into everything the principle of development, 
oi entwtckelung, or according to the definition of the eminent French 
critic — of the mutual dependence which connects the terms of a 
series of events, and binds them all to some abstract property, 
conceived of as common to the whole series. ^ 

Exclusively philosophic at the commencement with Leibnitz, Kant, 
Fichte, and Hegel, this doctrine has received from the experimental 
method the most striking confirmation which it has ever been the lot 
of any speculative system to obtain. All the scientific discoveries 
made within the last fifty years — and these are sufficiently astonishing 
to justify the enthusiasm, if not the infatuation, of our age with regard 
to what comes under the head of the positive sciences — have never 
ceased to converge towards a synthesis which explains all the pheno- 
mena of nature by inherent causes, and refers them to a few laws that 
are becoming more and more general. 

Astronomy, for instance, has long since taught us, by its nebular 
hypothesis, that the heavenly bodies must have been formed from 
primitive cosmic matter by the simple effect of an initial impulse, and 
without the ulterior intervention of any external agent whatever. 
To the law of gravitation, which thus suffices to explain the develop- 
ment of our solar system, the physical sciences have added the no less 
fruitful hypothesis of the persistence of force, or rather of the con- 
servation of energy.^ Chemistry has established the identity of the 

1. H. Taine, Histoire de la Litterature Anglaise. t. iv., p. 283. 

2. Mr. Herbert Spencer does not appear to allow that there is any real difference 
between "force" and "energy," as many scientists suppose, though, as he says, 
"To our perceptions this second kind of force differs from the first kind as being 



AND THE CRISIS OF THEISM. 37 

inorganic elements that enter into the composition, not only of all 
bodies belonging to this planet, but also of all those with which the 
space-traversing power of the spectroscope makes us acquainted; 
while, at the same time, it has enabled us to foresee the possibility of 
reducing these elements themselves to a single substance. Morphology 
has shown the prevalence of unity of structure among all living beings, 
from the cell in a free condition up to the most complicated organism 
in the scale of life, progress being measured, to a certain extent, by 
diversity and complication of organic function. Biology, moreover, 
, has compared the physiological changes which take place in the nerve- 
centres of all the creatures possessed of a brain, either for the trans- 
lation of thought into action or in its production by external agency. 

Natural history, again, after having destroyed the artificial barriers 
raised between the various species, has revealed, at least among the 
superior animak, the germ or outline of faculties hitherto thought to 
be the exclusive monopoly of the human race ; whilst, on the other 
hand, Anthropology has traced the origin of civilization from a state 
of barbarism bordering on animality. And, just as Embryology has 
shown us the gradual passage of the human embryo through the 
whole hierarchy of inferior organic forms, so Palaeontology has dis- 
covered an analogous gradation in the fauna and flora of the different 
ages of the earth. Finally, Geology, by attributing to our globe a 
past which is to be measured by incalculable myriads of ages, has 
supplied to the believers in the .continuity of the development of the 
world the material necessary for the formation of systems, such that the 
astonishing multiplicity of the effects produced therein might not be 
out of keeping with the unity of the cause and of the process giving 
rise to them. 

It was Mr. Darwin who first drew from these discoveries a scientific 
confirmation of the hypothesis, already formulated by Lamarck and 
Goethe, and then resumed in England by Chambers in his Vestiges of 
Creation^ of the unity of origin among living beings. In 1858, Darwin 
brought before the Linnean Society of London, simultaneously with 
Mr. Wallace, the theory of natural selection, which attributes the 
variation of species to the action of these two general laws : the 
universality of the struggle for life assuring the survival of the fittest 

not intrinsic, but extrinsic." He also prefers the word "Persistence" to "Con- 
servation." (First Principles,'^. 190. J — Translator. 



38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 

(that is those best adapted to the conditions of their environment), and 
heredity or the power which all living creatures possess of transmitting 
their individual characteristics by means of generation. During the 
following year he published his celebrated work on the origin of 
species, in which he places humanity itself within the scope of the 
development theory, in opposition to the views of Mr. Wallace, who 
contended that it was impossible to explain, on the principle of 
natural selection, the existence of certain faculties proper to the 
human mind, such as the power of generalization and abstraction. 

The funeral honours in which the Anglican clergy took part when 
Mr. Darwin's remains were interred in Westminster Abbey, prove the 
toleration of the Broad Church party, but not the orthodoxy of the illus- 
trious scientist. In reality, as long as the history of the earth did not 
condemn the hypothesis of sudden and distinct creations, the adherents 
of the Biblical tradition were able to reconcile to a greater or less ex- 
tent, by dint of laboured ingenuity, the narrative of Genesis with the 
revelations of Paleontology. But the theory which derived all living 
nature, man included, from one or at least a few rudimentary organ- 
isms, by a sort of continuous development, and under the influence of 
inherent causes, is absolutely irreconcilable with the hypothesis of a 
creation in several acts, or even with a miraculous intervention in the 
progress of life on the globe. Darwin, however, made no allusion to 
this aspect of the question. i 

Still in showing the chain of natural phenomena, by which organic 
matter has successively assumed the richest and most varied forms of 
life, Darwin did not reach the origin of life itself, and still less the 
origin of the world. The alternative he laid down was not between 
creation and evolution, but between organic creation by means of 
evolution and that same creation regarded as due to the successive inter- 
vention of an external Power. Hence he did not hesitate to declare 
that his doctrine, so far from excluding the existence of a First Cause, 
furnished a more rational and a more elevated conception of such a 
cause, from the mere fact that in place of a capricious, arbitrary, or 
powerless God, compelled to return to his work several times in order 
to bring it to perfection, it substituted a Supreme Being, who, from 

I. See his letter to a German student, which was published in the Academy of 
November 4th, 1882. "As far as I am concerned," he says, " I do not believe 
that any Revelation has been made." 



AND THE CRISIS OF THEISM. 39 

the first, gave to his creative work the forces and laws required to en- 
sure its regular and progressive development.^ In a not dissimilar 
manner, the new doctrine confined itself to displacing the old concep- 
tion of a final cause and to presenting that idea under conditions 
incomparably grander than the teleological combinations of Paley and 
his followers. It doubtless became henceforth inadmissible to seek 
finality in the separate processes of nature ; but nothing had occurred 
to prevent its being ascribed to the general end towards which the 
world might be regarded as advancing by its own inherent forces, or, 
indeed, of placing it in the law governing the evolution. In short, 
Darwin refrained from seeking the relation between mind and matter, 
and confined himself to estabUshing the truth that special physical 
modifications correspond to certain modifications of the intellectual 
faculties. 

The Sensational Psychology, again, having been revived by the 
Positivist method, led to analogous conclusions in the works of 
Mr. J. S. Mill. " The Positive mode of thought," said the author 
of Augusie Comte et le Fositivisme, " is not necessarily a denial of the 
supernatural : it merely throws back that question to the origin of 
all things. . . . Positive Philosophy maintains that within the 
existing order of the universe, or rather of the part of it known to us, 
the direct determining cause of every phenomenon is not supernatural, 
but natural. It is compatible with this to believe that the universe 
was created, and even that it is continuously governed, by an Intelli- 
gence, provided we admit that intelligent Governor adheres to fixed 
laws."2 

In the philosophical system of Mr. Herbert Spencer, we arrive at 
the point of convergence between the current of scientific ideas which 
I have just analysed, and the Positivist psychology of Stuart Mill. 
It is from the former that that philosopher borrowed the materials 
with which he has constructed his synthesis of the universe ; from the 
latter that he obtained his categories of the Knowable, which com- 
prehend all phenomena and their relations, and of the Unknowable, 

1. Origin of Species, 6th Ed., p. 269. 

2. Augtiste Comte and Positivism. London, 1865. In his three Posthumous 
Essays on Religion, Stuart Mill is still more affirmative. For instance, on page 174 
he says, " There is a large balance in favour of the probability of creation by 
intelligence. " 



40 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 

which applies to Noumena^ to the Absolute, to being in itself, to the 
inner or essential nature of force, matter, and motion, of time and 
space, and even of consciousness itself. Nor does he stop here; 
for, while on the one hand he extends Darwin's hypothesis to the 
totality of phenomena, in order to explain the development of organic 
nature, on the other he suppresses the necessity of a First Cause by 
suppressing all Umit of time to the action of the forces manifested in 
the universe. The importance this doctrine has acquired renders it 
necessary that I should pause to consider it at some length. 

In common with Mill and Hamilton, Spencer shows that the human 
mind is powerless to free itself from the limitations of time and space, 
and that consequently it can know nothing either of substance or of 
a First Cause. And though a real correlation must doubtless be 
admitted between the objects of thought and the conceptions we 
form of them, still this agreement can never furnish us with more 
than symbols of the reality : that is to say, images which represent in 
an imperfect manner the things for which they stand. It is, therefore, 
within the phenomenal and the relative that a scientific explanation 
of the universe is to be sought.^ 

Now, some ultimate principle is necessary upon which to hang the 
whole chain of scientific reasoning. This starting point, at once logical 
and scientific, is found in the persistence of force^ with its corollaries 
that matter is indestructible and motion continuous. Setting out 
from this principle, Spencer reaches the conclusion that all the ma- 
terial elements of our universe must have existed at some period or 
other in the form of attenuated matter : that is, in an incoherent, 
indeterminate, and homogeneous state. In virtue of the action and 
re-action which the atoms of this matter exerted upon each other, 
they at last began to move around certain centres of gravity, in the 
form of nebulae possessed of a gyratory motion. But this was only 
the first stage in the evolutionary process. The three laws which 
Spencer deduces from the persistence of force — the instability of the 
homogeneous, the multiplication of effects, and segregation or the law 
of co-ordination — permit him to define the entire process of evolution 
as " An integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, 

I. Mr. Spencer's i^zVj/ i':rma)J/.?j appeared in 1862. It maybe stated that all 
his earlier productions were but preliminary to this volume, just as his subsequent 
works form its systematic development. 



AND THE CRISIS OF THEISM. 41 

during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homo- 
geneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, and during which the 
retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation."^ 

Evolution, however, reaches a fatal term in equilibrium or the con- 
dition of equality between the forces which act upon the aggregate 
from without and the force which {his opposes to them. On the other 
hand, no equilibrium can be definitive, since every aggregate is exposed 
to the action of external forces in a universe of ceaseless activity, and 
one in which all the motion given off by compounds in the process of 
evolution must be absorbed by neighbouring bodies and exercise 
upon them a disintegrating action. Every part of the universe must, 
therefore, pass through a period of integration, and then one of disin- 
tegration, analogous to the alternate phases of creation and dissolution 
which fill eternity, in the Brahminic Pantheism, and are dependent 
upon the waking and sleeping states of Brahma. " Apparently," says 
Spencer,^ " the universally co-existent forces of attraction and repulsion 
produce now an immeasurably period, during which the 
attractive forces predominating cause universal concentration, and 
then an immeasurable period, during which the repulsive forces pre- 
dominating cause universal diffusion — alternate eras of evolution and 
dissolution." 

This eternal rhythm is not, however, restricted to cosmical pheno- 
mena ; it measures the existence of ephemeral things as well as the 
duration of a nebula. The only difference in the two cases consists 
in the length of the cycle, which is proportionate to the aggregates it 
comprises. Spencer seeks to demonstrate how this double process of 
evolution and dissolution suffices to explain, not only the production 
of inorganic phenomena, but also the hierarchy of organic beings: 
the appearance of the cell ; the variation of species ; the transition 
from vegetable to conscious, rational and moral life ; the formation of 
society; the vicissitudes of history; and finally all the results of social 
and intellectual activity. The fluctuations of the Exchange are thus 
subject to the same law as the passage of a comet ; while the victories 
of Alexander and the works of Shakespeare are reducible to the same 
factors as the Falls of Niagara and the spots on the sun. Human 
society, by dint of modification and specialization, will thus attain to a 

1. First Principles. 4th Edition, page 396. 

2. First Principles i P- 537* 



42 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 

State of equilibrium which will be " the establishment of the greatest 
perfection and the most complete happiness."^ This Millenium, 
however, will be only one of the last steps towards universal dis- 
solution. The last term of evolution is immobility or equilibrium ; 
then comes dissolution— the doom of the species as well as the indi- 
vidual, and indeed of all which is only a compound of matter and 
motion : Pulvis es, in pulverem reverteris ! 

Still it would not be correct to conclude from this that Spencer sees 
in mere matter and motion the last word of philosophy. On the 
contrary, he rejects Materialism with perhaps even greater emphasis 
than Spiritualism. It would be easier, he says, to transform what we 
call matter into what is regarded as spirit than to carry out the opposite 
process, which is absolutely impossible. But no interpretation can 
enable us to advance beyond our symbols. In his opinion, indeed, 
matter and motion, to which he reduces all things, are only manifesta- 
tions of the force which reveals itself in consciousness, and this force 
itself is only to be regarded as " a certain effect of the Unconditioned 
Cause, as the relative reality indicating to us an Absolute Reality, by 
which it is immediately produced."^ 

This Unconditioned and Absolute Reality, whose existence Spencer 
demonstrates by the same argument which serves to establish the 
relatitivity of our knowledge, thus becomes the ultimate goal at which 
all science ends. " Though the Absolute cannot in any manner be 
known, in the strict sense of knowing, yet we find that its positive 
existence is a necessary datum of consciousness ; that so long as con- 
sciousness continues, we cannot for an instance rid it of this datum ; 
and that thus the belief which this datum constitutes has a higher 
warrant than any other whatever. "3 

Now it turns out, according to our philosopher, that the fundamental 
idea of religion equally consists in the affirmation of this Absolute and 
incomprehensible Power, which is without limits in either time or space, 
and of which the Universe is but the manifestation : — " Not only is 
the omnipresence of something which passes comprehension, that mcst 
abstract belief which is common to all religions, which becomes the 
more distinct in proportion as they develop, and which remains after 

1. First Principles^ p. 517. 

2. First Principles, p. 170. 

3. First Principles ^ p. 98. 



AND THE CRISIS OF THEISM. 43 

their discordant elements have been mutually cancelled ; but it is that 
belief which the most unsparing criticism of each leaves unquestionable 
— or rather makes ever clearer." ^ It is therefore "in this deepest, 
widest, and most certain of all facts," that the ultimate reconciliation of 
science and religion may and should be found. So long as religion 
is content to remain within the sphere of the Unknowable, Spencer 
sees in it the expression of a " supreme verity," and he believes that 
in the future, as in the past, it will prevent men " from being wholly 
absorbed in the relative or immediate. "^ 

He goes so far, indeed, as to admit that whilst purifying themselves 
more and more through the influence of science, the symbolic con- 
ceptions of the Absolute will continue indefinitely to occupy the human 
consciousness and inspire religion, — "very likely there will ever remain 
a need to give shape to that indefinite sense of an Ultimate Existence, 
which forms the basis of our intelligence. "^ It will simply have to be 
remembered that every notion thus framed is "merely a symbol, 
utterly without resemblance to that for which it stands. "^ 

Now, although Spencer explicitly rejects Pantheism equally with 
Theism and Atheism, his "indeterminate" conception of an "Absolute 
Reality," such that all the phenomena of nature are but its manifestation 
or veil, ends none the less, however little we may translate it into 
metaphysical terms, in a Pantheistic conception of the universe. It 
is true he drops the name of God and substitutes for it the term 
Unknowable, which affords him the double advantage of not being 
compromised by metaphysical associations and of constantly reminding 
him of the incomprehensible character of the Supreme Reality. But 
in rigidly refusing to define this Unknowable he treats it as Being and 
as Power-, he ascribes to it immanence, unity, omnipresence, and 
unlimited persistence in time and space ; he assigns to it the laws of 

1. First Principles, p, 45. 

2. First Principles, p. 100. 

3. First Principles, p. 113. These concessions afe unpalatable to a number of 
Continental Evolutionists, who have condemned them as the result of the influence 
unconsciously exercised upon Mr. Spencer's mind by his Protestant surroundings. 
Without staying to discuss the force of this argument, we may state that it 
would be easy to turn it against these critics themselves, by remarking that the rea- 
son why they abjure the religious sentiment with so much bitterness, even within 
its own province, is because they are influenced by a re-action from the prejudices 
which prevail in their Catholic surrounding, or which they may have long retained 
from early education. 



44 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 

nature as modes of action ; and, finally, with respect to both external 
and internal phenomena, he regards it as sustaining the relation of 
substance to manifestation, and even of cause to effect. If, there- 
fore, Spencer deviates from pure and simple Pantheism, it is merely 
in so far as this confounds God with the universe, while our philoso- 
pher sees in the Unknowable not only the substance of the world and 
the immanent cause of all its phenomena, but, over and above this, 
a transcendent Power which surpasses all definition. 

In this respect, indeed, he is more of a Theist than of a Pantheist 
even, and it need be no matter of astonishment that certain of his 
disciples have based upon his doctrine a genuine development of 
mysticism. Speaking of the religious bearing of his philosophy, he 
says : " In the estimate it implies of the Ultimate Cause, it does not 
fall short of the alternative position, but exceeds it. Those who 
espouse this alternative position, make the erroneous assumption that 
the choice is between personality and something lower than person- 
ality ; whereas the choice is rather between personality and something 
higher. Is it not just possible that there is a mode of being as much 
transcending Intelligence and Will, as these transcend mechanical 
motion ? It is true that we are totally unable to conceive any such 
higher mode of being. But this is not a reason for questioning its 
existence ; it is rather the reverse. Have we not seen how utterly in- 
competent our minds are to form even an approach to a conception 
of that which underlies all phenomena ? Is it not proved that this 
incompetency is the incompetency of the Conditioned to grasp the 
Unconditioned ? Does it not follow that the Ultimate Cause cannot 
in any respect be conceived by us because it is in every respect greater 
than can be conceived ? "^ 

Still whatever may be the value of these declarations, the sincerity 
of which no one can doubt, Mr. Spencer's views were too much 
opposed to the current theological ideas, as regards both natural and 
Revealed religion, not to raise a violent storm among theologians, 
while they at the same time led to exaggerated hopes with the enemies 
of every religious idea. In vain did these views present a new sphere 
for the religious sentiment by setting forth the mystery of the Un- 
knowable, the greatness of its manifestations, the inflexible action of its 

I. First Principles, p. 109. 



AND THE CRISIS OF THEISM. 45 

laws and the eternal rhythm of the forces revealing its power. They 
none the less replaced the personal and conscious God of the tra- 
ditional theology by a Being deaf, blind, and indifferent to human 
misery, or at least so far removed from man that no direct relation 
could any longer be conceived to exist between the two terms of the 
religious equation ; and thus there seemed to disappear that sentiment 
of a direct communication between the soul and its Author, which 
forms not only the central principle of Protestanism, but also the 
essential basis of Theism. As Mr. Gladstone once asked in an 
academical address : does not Mr. Spencer's scheme of reconciliation 
between religion and science resemble the proposal of a man who 
wishing to free himself from an intruder, should say, " My house has 
two sides to it and we will share them — please to take the outside ? " 

No one certainly can deny that Mr. Spencer's doctrine leaves room 
for the two great and indispensible factors of all religion.: the belief 
in a mysterious Power and a sense of dependence upon that Power. 
But if it maintains dependence, does it not suppress obligation ; does 
it not, indeed, destroy the idea of duty, which has become an element 
henceforth inseparable from the religious sentiment ? Besides, what will 
remain not merely of the soul, if the very personality of the individual 
be only an ephemeral ebb and flow of psychological states ; but even 
of consciousness itself if this be nothing more than motion trans- 
muted by its environment and by hereditary tendencies ? ^ 

Mr. Spencer's speculations seem to have been met at first by a 
conspiracy of silence. In 1864, an able writer, M. Aug. Laugel, in 
giving an analysis of the works of the thinker whom he called " the 
last of the English metaphysicians," wrote thus in the Revue des Deux 
Mondes : — "In the midst of universal indifference, Mr. Herbert 
Spencer has remained persistently attached to the study of philosophy. 

I. It may be stated here that Mr. Spencer, while holding that force existing as 
motion, light, or heat, is transmutable into modes of consciousness, and that per- 
sonality, though " a fact beyond all others the most certain, is yet a thing which 
cannot be truly known at all,"! says : — " How can the sceptic who has decomposed 
his consciousness into impressions and ideas explain the fact that he considers them 
as his impressions and ideas? Or once more, if, as he must, he admits that he has 
an impression of his personal existence, what warrant can he show for rejecting 
this impression as unreal while he accepts all his other impressions as real ? Unless 
he can give satisfactory answers to these queries, which he cannot, he must abandon 
his conclusions, and must admit the reality of the individual mind. "2 (i) First 
Principles^ p. 65. (2) Ibid^ p. 64. — Translator. 



46 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 

It has doubtless required from him heroic courage and a rare spirit of 
independence in order to devote himself to severe studies which can 
merely secure for him a few isolated followers. With the intellectual 
power, the fertility of resource, and the almost encyclopaedic variety of 
knowledge with which his works abound, Mr. Spencer, if he had con- 
sented to walk in the beaten track, would have certainly obtained all 
those marks of public favour which English society delights to shower 
upon those who serve it as it wishes to be served. He has chosen, 
however, to condemn himself to poverty, and, what is still harder to 
bear, obscurity. "^ 

There was never, perhaps, a prediction more fully based upon 
probabilities, never one more completely belied by events. Mr. 
Spencer's doctrine was not of a kind that could long remain hidden 
under a bushel, and whatever fears it might inspire in its adversaries, 
they were compelled to take account of it. Its early experiences were 
stormy. The controversy reached its height in 1874, when Professor 
Huxley published his Lay Sermons^ in which he strongly contended 
for the rights of reason, and when Dr. Tyndall delivered his celebrated 
Belfast address as President of the British Association. The latter, 
while fully recognizing with" Mr. Spencer the independence of the 
religious sentiment in the sphere of the Unknowable, advanced a 
claim for the ancient doctrine of atoms, and denied the right of 
theologians to explain the origin of the universe. This was more 
than enough to call down all the thunders of English orthodoxy upon 
the head of the speaker, and there were fanatics who went so far as 
to threaten him with the old and unrepealed statutes against the 
detractors of the Divinity. Writing the following year, he said he 
had often been compelled to remark with sadness that the way in 
which men are influenced by what they call their religion, forms a 
striking display of that corrupt nature which they assert religion is 
specially intended to modify or restrain. 

The very violence of these attacks could but favour the spread of 
the doctrine they were intended to stifle. It is very interesting to 
follow the course of the controversy in the Reviews of the day. For 
several years the conflict raged. Mr. Spencer himself took part in it 
by means of numerous articles, while at the same time he continued 

I. Aug. Laugel, Les etudes philosophiques en Angleterre {Revue des Deux 
Mondes, of the 15th February, 1864). 



AND THE CRISIS OF THEISM. 47 

the publication of his works. To-day a great calm prevails on the 
subject, at least in the upper regions of English thought. Not only 
has the doctrine of evolution obtained a place in the sunshine of 
British respectability, but it is tending more and more, under one 
form or another, to permeate the philosophy and even the religion of 
the country. 

Above and beyond its immediate disciples, it has secured a large 
measure of support in two groups which are daily becoming more 
numerous in the world of letters : practical men who look upon the 
time devoted to metaphysical or religious question as so much loss 
to the service of humanity, and the indifferent, who, without attacking 
any form of religion, are none the less desirous of being as little 
occupied with it as possible, and who are happy to meet with a philo- 
sophy which justifies their indifference. It was in relation to the 
attitude of these two classes that the word Agnosticism was invented 
some fifteen years ago, which, as its etymology shows, stands for the 
absence of knowledge. And this Agnostic or know-nothing way of 
treating religious questions has even become the fashion in certain 
sections of society, and many a one, who would be embarrassed to 
explain why he does so, calls himself an Agnostic to-day just as he 
might have called himself a " Freethinker" two centuries* ago, or a 
Puseyite a generation or two since. 

This state of things, which, however little it may extend itself, 
would seem destined to lead the more educated classes to a new 
interregnum of positive faith, induced Professor Seeley, one of the most 
distinguished members of the University of Cambridge, to publish a 
work in 1882 in which he attempted to describe the bearing and 
influence of the religious sentiment among his fellow-countrymen. 
According to this work, which produced a considerable sensation,^ if 
we take the three elements severally able to furnish a religious ideal ; 
the love of the true, or Science, the perception of the beautiful, or 
Art, the idea of duty, or Morals, it is only the third which finds satis- 
faction in Christianity to-day. Science — that is to say the religion of 
the Absolute, or of Law, which even when it proclaims itself Atheistical 
admits the existence of a God whom it names the Unknowable, the 
Cosmos, or the Universal Order — has ceased, in effect, to concede to 

I . Natural Religion, by the author of Ecce Homo. London : Macmillan & Co. 
1882. 



48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 

that mysterious Reality the attributes of personality, foreknowledge, 
goodness and justice, or to lend it an existence distinct from the 
world, and recognise in it the nature of a First Cause. In the same 
way Art, that is the religion of Nature, revolts more and more against 
Christianity whose moral rigidity and aesthetic indifference it de- 
nounces. 

A large number of scientists confine themselves to the criticism of 
the dominant theology, and abstain from making any affirmation as 
to the future of religion. There are some even who discount the fall 
of every system of faith.^ But there also exists an important section 
who, " while it rejects Christianity, proclaims religion to be the highest 
of all things, and looks forward to a great renewal of its influence." 
This party, however, is divided as to the form of religion which is to 
be substituted for Christianity. Some believe that humanity is destined 
to become the object of worship ; others, again, consider that the hour 
of Pantheism has struck, and " the time when the supernatural tyrant 
of the universe must give way to the universe itself." Then, again, 
there are differences of opinion as to the form this Pantheism will 
assume, and " often it may be observed that the purer, sweeter worship 
which is promised to us is pictured as a revival of Greek Paganism. "'^ 

These 'aspirations are by no means irreligious. The only real 
irreligion, and it is to be met with in the Church as well as beyond its 
pale, is, on the one hand, the presumption characteristic of men too 
infatuated with their own importance to subordinate their personality 
to the natural order of things ; and, on the other hand, the attitude 
of those who are too absorbed in the trivialities of life to rise to the 
conception of principles and laws. Now such is not the case either 
with science or art, which, in common with Christian morality, con- 
demn this double tendency in the name of their respective ideals. 
Let these three elements be combined and we shall possess, it is con- 
tended, a system of religion that will restore peace and spiritual union 
to modern society, which is now threatened with anarchy. "The 
natural rehgion of which we are in search," says the author, " will in- 

1. The author of Natural Religio7i remarks (Preface to the 2nd Edition) that 
**it is not the greatest scientific authorities that are so confident in negation, but 
rather the inferior men who echo their opinions and who live themselves in the 
atmosphere, not of science, but of party controversy. " 

2. Op. Cit.^ 2nd Edition, p. 73, 



AND THE CRISIS OF THEISM. 49 

elude a religion of humanity as well as a religion of material things. 
It will retain at least the kernel (of Christianity), if it rejects the 
shell .... But along with this transfigured Christianity, only 
in a subordinate rank, it will include the higher Paganism, or in other 
words the purified worship of natural forms." And this is not all. 
It will preserve the worship of the principle of unity, whether the 
object of this worship be called Nature or God. 

This system, which the author names the religion of culture, in the 
German sense of the word, will possess its Church and its clergy. 
This church will consist of the vast communion of those who are in- 
spired by the ideals of the culture and civilization of the age, and its 
clergy, as educators of the people, will be subject to no restrictions of 
creed, but merely required to fulfil the moral and intellectual condi- 
tions suited to their office. Will the existing churches be able to 
adapt themselves to this transformation, or will the world be compelled 
to create some new organism as the vehicle of these new aspirations ? 
There are few signs, except in England and America, of any such 
power on the part of Christianity. And even in these two nations, if 
the Church is to become the spiritual citadel of civilization, it must 
hasten to open its doors to new ideas and to renounce every exclusive 
dogma. 

Professor Seeley asserts^ that he has placed himself in his work at the 
standpoint occupied by the extreme school. If, however, we examine 
the situation from a more general point of view, it is seen that a great 
number of superior men refuse to admit the impossibility of reconcil- 
ing the principles of spiritual religion with the doctrine of evolution. 

There are some who, like the eminent physiologist, Dr. W. B. 
Carpenter, himself one of the first to accept, and almost a precursor 
of evolution, earnestly declare, as the result of their researches, that 
mind and will form the very basis of evolution.^ 

1. Preface to second edition. 

2. "Science points to the origination of all power in mind." ( On Mind and 
Will in Nature, in the Conte?7iporary Review, 1872.) During the same year, Dr. 
Carpenter closed his Presidential Address at the Brighton meeting of the British 
Association in the following words: "For while the deep-seated instincts of 
humanity and the profound researches of philosophy alike point to mind as the one 
and only source of Power, it is the highest prerogative of science to demonstrate 
the unity of the Power which is operating through the limitless extent and variety 
of the universe, and to trace its continuity through the vast series of ages that have 
been occupied in its evolution." — See also on the subject, Lecky, History of 
Rationalism in Europe, I, Vol., p. 286, 

£ 



50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 

Others again — such as Mr. W. Graham, in his remarkable work, 
The Creed of Science (London, 1881), which is written with the utmost 
impartiality and displays the highest powers of reasoning — seek to 
demonstrate that the philosophy of evolution possesses as its logical 
corollary, not a foreseen and desired aim, but a purpose progressively 
pursued by the Unknowable Power of Herbert Spencer. Mr. Graham 
thinks, moreover, that this purpose must be rational, that is to say, 
in conformity with what we regard as the rational order of things. 
" Otherwise," says he, " we cannot conceive any explanation of the 
past course of evolution, save chance, and we can have no guarantee 
that the future course of development will be controlled otherwise 
than by chance." 

There are those, too, who lay an emphasis on the moral bearing of 
this purpose, and, in imitation of Matthew Arnold, conceive of the 
action of the Unknowable as a stream of tendency which makes for 
the Good and the Beautiful. And, further, there are some like 
Professors Tait and Balfour Stewart who, returning by means of modern 
science to the speculations of Neo-Platonism, affirm that it is imposs- 
ible to admit the principle of continuity in the development of the 
universe, unless we assume the existence of an invisible universe, of 
which the visible order of things is in some sort a projection or 
sensible condensation.^ 

But I must' stop here. For if I undertook to enumerate all the 
attempts which have been made to reconcile the philosophy of evolu- 
tion with the principles of Theism, I should never finish my task. 
It will suffice for me to show how, according to the reasoning of an 
ardent champion of evolution, Mr. J. Sully, the theory in question 
can be legitimately held in connection with the most diverse meta- 
physical systems of thought, and even with the old doctrines of 
Natural Religion. In an article of a very exhaustive kind, which was 
published in 1878, in the eighth vol. of the Encyclopcedia Britannica^ 

I. The Unseen Universe^ the book in which the views of Professors Tait and 
Balfour Stewart are expounded, though treating of matters of an abstract nature and 
addressing itself exclusively to cultivated minds and indeed to scientists, has passed 
through a tenth edition in England and has hardly yet ceased to be a subject of con- 
troversy. Having been recently translated into French, however, and published by 
the firm of Germer-Bailliere in their " Bibliotheque Philosophique," it has scarcely 
obtained an honourable mention in the special press of the country. This circum- 
stance is characteristic of the difference in intellectual tendencies which prevails 
among the two peoples. 



AND THE CRISIS OF THEISM. 51 

by Professor Huxley and Mr. Sully, the latter defined the theory of 
evolution as "the highest generalization respecting the order of 
phenomena in time," and, being such and such only, he considers it 
powerless to furnish a scientific explanation of the cause, purpose, or 
nature, either of the substance which furnishes the materials evolved, 
or of the process itself. ^ Thus the Positivist who desires to adhere 
to the actual data of science may accept evolution, maintaining, in 
doing so, that the limitations of the human mind will for ever restrict 
man to the knowledge of phenomena. The empirical idealist, on the 
other hand, may regard the theory as one that formulates " the order 
of sensations, actual and possible, of conscious minds. "2 Or, again, 
evolution is in equal harmony with all those philosophical doctrines 
"which .regard the higher or more complex forms of existence as 
following and depending on the lower and simple forms, which 
represent the course of the world as a gradual transition from the 
indeterminate to the determinate, from the uniform to the varied, and 
which assume the cause of the process to be immanent in the world 
that is thus transformed." 

It may not be without interest to briefly mention, at this stage of 
our inquiry, the principal philosophical systems which, according to 
the learned contributor to the Encyclopcedia, may be legitimately 
grafted upon the theory of evolution. This theory, he remarks, at- 
tributes objective existence to nothing beyond motion and force. 
But, at the same time, the law of the conservation of energy attests 
that, beneath all the variations of phenomena, there is something real 
that exists as the substance of these manifestations. What is the 
nature of this reality ? Here science gives place to the interpretations 
of philosophy, which may be classified in the following manner : — 

(i) Dualistic solutions. Here evolution progresses simultaneously 
in the physical and spiritual orders, the coincidence between the 

1 . Professor Huxley wrote the strictly biological and Mr. Sully the general and 
philosophical part of the article. — Translator. 

2. It is notorious that for empirical idealism, all the phenomena to which we 
attribute an objective existence, are only the projection and the reflection of our 
subjective sensations. Mr. Spencer maintains that if this theory were true evolu- 
tion would be a dream. Mr. Sully however expressly asserts that the doctrine may 
be formulated in idealistic as well as in realistic terms. This latter is also the 
opinion of Professor Huxley, who, in his Life of Hume, insists upon the point with 
still greater emphasis. 



52 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 

two series of phenomena remaining unexplained or being attributed 
to arbitrary intervention. 

(2) Monistic solutions in which mind is looked upon as a property 
or manifestation of matter (Materialism) ; where matter is made the 
outcome of mind (SpirituaUsm) ; or in the third place when mind and 
matter are taken to be the opposite sides of one and the same 
mysterious reality (Monism proper). 

The field of hypotheses becomes still more extended when it is a 
question of finding the cause of evolution. Here we meet with : 

(a) The systems in which a mechanical interpretation predominates 
— that is to say the theory that all changes are fatally determined by 
their antecedents (Determinism). This conception is generally con- 
nected with materialistic views as to the origin of the universe and the 
nature of man. It is also found, however, allied with doctrines which 
explain the development of life and consciousness, either by according 
to the primordial monads certain elementary psychical properties, or 
by referring mind and matter to a spiritual substance (mind-stuff) as 
the ultimate Reality behind the world. The difficulty of regarding 
matter as the source of conscious life, has equally led to the con- 
ception of the primordial substance under a quasi-material form, 
which, though inaccessible to our senses, has given rise to the material 
elements by a species of condensation. 

(b) The systems in which the teleological conception predominates ; 
in other words, those in which the evolutionary process is supposed to 
be directed by a tendency towards a rational end, a tendency which 
is known in the schools by such names as the vital or plastic principle, 
cosmic force or Nature personified. Following Aristotle, some of these 
schools of thought admit that the mind is the formative principle of 
the organism. Others endow the universe with a soul, and speak of 
nature as its visible body ; they thus obtain a spiritual principle as the 
directive agency in the evolution of the material world. When this 
principle is looked upon not only as the creative cause, but also as the 
original source of life and consciousness, we possess in it a form of 
Pantheism which makes of the world a divine incarnation. "The 
full development," adds Mr. Sully, " of this way of regarding the 
world and its evolution, as the work of a spiritual principle aiming 
towards an end, is to be found in certain doctrines of objective 
idealism, which resolve all material existence into a mode of mental 



AND THE CRISIS OF THEISM. 53 

existence : will and thought. These theories simplify the conception of 
evolution to the utmost, by the identification both of the substantial 
reality which enters into all parts of the world-process, and of the 
rationale of all parts of the process itself. In the systems now referred 
to, the mechanical idea is wholly taken up into the teleological. Pur- 
pose is the highest law of things, and it is one purpose which manifests 
itself through all stages of the world — evolution in the region of inor- 
ganic nature, of organic life, and of human history. 

(c) The systems which combine the two preceding categories and 
which are generally based upon a monistic ontology. They present 
themselves, either as universalistic conceptions, when they see in evo- 
lution a double manifestation of the activity of a single substance 
(the Divine reason or principle of necessity), or as individualistic con- 
ceptions when they attribute this double manifestation to the increas- 
ing activity of an indeterminate number of elements endowed with 
motion and sensibility. 

Although the theory of evolution claims to explain, by the action of 
the senses, the formation in the human mind of such ideas as time 
and space, it does not condemn the doctrine which attributes these 
conceptions to a transcendental origin. *' It may however be main- 
tained," remarks Mr. Sully, " that the idea is not even suggested by 
experience ; if so, it would follow from the evolution theory that its 
present persistence represents a permanent mental disposition to think 
in a particular way. Even then the question would remain open, 
whether the permanent disposition were an illusory or trustworthy 
tendency, and in deciding this point the doctrine of evolution appears 
to offer us no assistance."^ 

We may mention incidentally that Mr. Sully admits the justice of 
the reproach so often urged against the evolution philosophy, that it 
preaches a morality destitute of a due sanction : — "Among other re- 
sults this doctrine may be said to give new form to the determinist 
theory of volition and to establish the relativity of all moral ideas, as 
connected with particular stages of moral development. It cannot, 
as Mr. Sidgwick has shown, provide a standard or end of conduct, 
except to those who are already disposed to accept the law seqm 
naturam as the ultimate rule of life." 

I. Encyclopcedia Britannica, 9th Edition, Vol. VIII., p. 772. 



54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 

It is generally thought that the doctrine of evolution has given a 
deadly blow to the belief in the existence of a Creator and to the 
doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Mr. Sully asserts in the fol- 
lowing words that nothing of the sort has occurred : — " Mr. Spencer 
considers the ideas of evolution and of a pre-existing mind, incapable 
of being united in thought. Yet according to others the idea is by no 
means incompatible with the notion of an original Creator, though it 
serves undoubtedly to remove the action of such a Being further from 
our ken." " At first sight it might appear that the doctrine as applied 
to the subjective world, by removing the broad distinction between 
the human and the animal mind, would discourage the hope of a future 
life for man's soul. Yet it may be found after all, that it leaves the 
question where it was. It may perhaps be said that it favours the old 
disposition to attribute immortality to those lower forms of mind, 
with which the human mind is said to be continuous. Yet there is 
nothing inconsistent in the supposition that a certain stage of mental 
development qualifies a mind for immortality, even though this stage 
has been reached by a very gradual process of development. And 
if, as it might be shown, the modern doctrine of evolution is suscep- 
tible of being translated into terms of Leibnitz's hypothesis of indes- 
tructible monads which include all grades of souls, then it is clearly 
not contradictory of the idea of immortality. "^ 

In short, according to Mr. Sully, the theory of evolution is able to 
to accommodate itself to almost all kinds of philosophical hypotheses 
as to the origin and essence of the universe, with the exception of 
those systems of thought which see in the order of the world either 
an increasing imperfection, as with the Gnostics, or a series of arbitrary 
creative acts, like those described in the Book of Genesis. 

On the other hand, the Theism based upon rational principles has 
gradually recovered from the effects of the shock which the new 
philosophy gave it, and we have even seen theologians showing that 
Theism can do without a First Cause, as well as without supernatural 
interventions, in the explanation of the universe. " There is no longer 
hope," writes Dr. Martineau, in the Introduction to the Rev. J. J. 
Tayler's work on The Religious Life of England ^'^ "of finding a birth- 

1. Op. at. 

2. A Retrospect of the Religious Life of England, 2nd Edition, p. 32. 



AND THE CRISIS OF THEISM. 55 

day for matter, for laws, for species, for planets, or even for man ; 
and no longer despair of comprehending all known phenomena within ' 
the probable range of an admitted natural order. . . . God is 
conceived, not as 'First Cause' prefixed to the scheme of things, but as 
Indwelling Cause pervading it ; not excluded by Second Causes, but 
coinciding with them while transcending them — as the One ever- 
living Objective Agency, the modes of which must be classified and 
interpreted, by science in the outer field, by conscience in the inner. 
This change of conception is due to the lessened prominence of 
mechanical ideas and the advance of physiology to a dominant posi-* 
tion, substituting the thought of life working from within for that of 
transitive impulse starting from without. Under this higher form of 
religious thought, all need entirely ceases of reaching a creative epoch 
when the divine " Fiat " went forth, and prior to which was an eternal 
solitude of God : or of finding tasks accomplished which are beyond 
the resources of the known method of the world : or of insisting on 
gaps in the continuity of being, which only paroxysms of Omnipo- 
tence could overlap ; and the breakdown, therefore, of the old proofs 
on these points leaves Theism quite unharmed. The modern science 
does not even disturb us with a new idea, for 'evolution' is only 
growth ; it merely raises the question how far into the field of nature 
that idea can properly be carried — a question surely of no religious 
significance. . . . The Unity of the Causal Power, which is all 
that the spreading network of analogies can establish, cannot possibly 
be unwelcome to those who regard it all as the working of one mind." 

It is further worthy of note, that Scepticism has not as yet reached 
the masses of the English nation. Even in the sphere of literature 
and art it is probable that the majority believe in a sort of vague 
Theism, susceptible of being transformed into positive faith or into 
cavilling unbelief, according to the development of character, or the 
pressure of external circumstances. It is nothing more than we might 
expect therefore that positive faith should continue to predominate in 
the masses, and even among the middle classes. There is hardly any 
exception to this, save among the workmen of the towns, who are 
always more or less hostile to the idea of attendance at public worship \ 
but even their indifference seems to have been largely encroached 
upon, of late, by the revivals of the Methodists and the zeal of the 



56 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION. 

Salvation Army. And finally, the fact must not be overlooked that 
the Churches, at least in the greater part of the Protestant denomina- 
tions, are seeking to keep abreast of the ideas of the age ; and these 
attempts form one of the most interesting features of the religious 
evolution I have undertaken to describe. 



CHAPTER III 



THE PROGRESS OF THOUGHT IN ORTHODOX 
PROTESTANTISM. 



The English Protestant sects according to the Census of 1881 — The English Church : 
its organization, its resources, its strength, and its privileges — Its religious parties 
— The theological narrowness and philanthropical activity of the Low Church 
party — The High Church party — The reactionary significance of the Puseyite 
movement — Anglican Ritualism and the conquests of the Roman Church — The 
formation of the Broad Church section : its symbolic and critical schools — The 
noise made by Essays and Reviews — Bishop Colenso and the Pentateuch — The 
increasing tendency to explain miracles by natural causes — The decline of dogma 
— Opposition to the Athanasian Creed — The false position of the leaders of the 
Broad Church party — The eventual revision of the Thirty-nine Articles — The 
movement for the separation of Church and State — Probable results of Disestab- 
lishment in England— Statistics of the orthodox Nonconformist sects — Methodists 
— Baptists — Presbyterianism in Scotland and in England — Congregationalists — 
The sects of less importance — The general character of Dissent — The growth of 
ideas in the narrowest of the orthodox sects — Schisms and expulsions — The 
progress of Rationalism in the Churches accessible to theological change — The 
enfeeblement of the Sectarian spirit — The Evangelical Alliance — The united 
action of the Churches in moral and philanthropical efforts — The barrier of 
creeds. 



*' If there were but one religion in England," said Voltaire, "its des- 
potism would have to be feared \ if there were only two they would cut 
each other's throats ; but as there are thirty they live together in peace 
and happiness." Still, Voltaire did not estimate the sects beyond the 
pale of the Establishment as more than a twentieth part of the nation, 
and he thought they were all destined to be swallowed up by their great 
rival. Up to the present, however, events have been far enough from 
justifying his prediction. According to the official returns of 1882, 
there existed in England and Wales t86 sects, twelve of which had 
arisen during the preceding year, whilst only a single one had dis- 
appeared during the same period.^ It is worthy of remark, however, 
that many of these denominations diifer merely in name, purpose, or 
organization. Thus of the twelve new communions which were formed 
between the ist of September, 1881, and the 31st of August, 1882, 

I. Whitaker's Almanack for 1885 gives the number as 197. — Translator. 



58 THE PROGRESS OF THOUGHT 

eight were simply separate orders connected with the military forms 
so oddly introduced into religious propagandism by the Salvation 
Army. These new orders are the Army of the King's Own, the 
Christian Army, the Gospel Temperance Blue Ribbon Army, the 
Holiness Army, the Hosannah Army, the Redeemed Army, the Royal 
Gospel Army, and the Salvation Navy. Among the four others there 
are two which appear to be purely evangelical associations, — the 
Christian Evangelists and the Christian Pioneers; the third is a 
rationalistic society, the Aletheans ; and the last a Calvinistic organi- 
zation, the Calvinistic Independents. 

Then, again, a certain number of particular sects may represent 
but a single sub-division of one of the great branches of Protestantism. 
Thus, the Methodists figure in the returns as consisting of seventeen 
denominations, the Baptists form fifteen, and the Anglicans themselves 
nine. This arises from the fact that certain associations (formed for 
moral and religious purposes) claim the character of distinct sects, in 
order to avail themselves of the privileges which the law grants to 
ecclesiastical bodies. Such, for example, are the Association for the 
Defence of the Bible, the Evangelical Association of Missions to 
Workmen, and the Christian Young Men's Association, 

Taking into account these circumstances, we may estimate the 
number of sects, properly so called, at about thirty, which is, indeed, 
a tolerably respectable figure for a population of about twenty-six 
millions. It may be added, on behalf of those who think they see in 
this diversity of form a source of weakness for the religious sentiment, 
that according to the same statistics England possessed on the ist of 
September, 1882, 21,864 places of worship, or 712 more than 1 881.1 

Before passing on to a description of these different sects, it will 
perhaps be of interest to reproduce the following statistics, which 
furnish dai^a more or less approximative respecting the different kinds 
of religious belief that prevail in the various countries where the Anglo- 
Saxon language is spoken.2 

1. This number had risen to 23,341 by the beginning of 1885. — Translator. 

2. The figures and information given in this chapter are borrowed for the most 
part from Whitaker^s Almanack for 1883 ; from the Encyclopcedia Britannica, 9th 
Edition, Vol. I. to XIII. ; from the Encyclopidie des sciences relegieuses, published 
under the direction of M. F. Lichtenberger ; and lastly from a useful compilation 
by Mr. William Burder, A History of all Religions. Philadelphia, 1873 (Parts IV. 
and V.) 



IN ORTHODOX PROTESTANTISM. 



59 



Episcopalians 
Methodists 
Roman Catholics 
Presbyterians 
Baptists 
Congregationalists 
Unitarians 

Persons belonging to o 
thinkers, or those with 



her sects, Free- 
no known belief 



20,500,000 

15,500,000 

14,100,000 

10,300,000 

8,050,000 

6,000,000 

1,000,000 

11,350,000! 



The Episcopal Church, which ceased to be the established religion 
of Scotland in 1689, and of Ireland in 1871, has lost, even in England, 
all those of its privileges which are inconsistent with the civil and 
political equality of the people. Still it remains the National Church 
par excellence, the Church of England, the only one which the State 
supports and regulates. Not only do its ministers take part in public 
ceremonies in their official capacity, but even more, it shares in the 
legislation of the country by means of its Bishops, who sit in the 
House of Lords. Regarded as the sole heir of the property bequeathed 
to the Roman Church in England before the Reformation, it is alone 
capable of possessing and inheriting property in the interest of religion, 
apart from the exceptions formally established by law in favour of 
certain special sects. On the other hand, it remains subject to public 
authority, which regulates its organization, watches over its discipline, 
names its leaders, and possesses the right to define its creeds. It is 
the aggregate of these privileges and obligations which constitutes 
what is spoken of as the Establishment of the Anglican Church. 

In 187 1 the Estabhshed Church possessed sixteen thousand places 
of worship. Its members, estimated at thirteen millions in England, 
belong, on the one hand, to the aristocracy, the upper middle classes, 
and the members of the Universities, and, on the other, to the rural 
population of the greater part of the country. The labouring and 
artizan classes of the towns generally hold aloof from its services, and 
this explains the encouragement which a certain number of the High 
Church clergy have given to the practises of the Salvation Army .2 

1 . These hypothetical statistics are slightly varied in their application to 1885. 
— Translator. 

2. The publication of the secret instructions of the Army, as well as the exag- 
gerated form of its pious eccentricities, has of late greatly alienated the sympathies of 



€0 THE PROGRESS OF THOUGHT 

Finally, in some of the rural districts where Dissent predominates, 
and specially in Wales, its members form but a very small minority 
of the population. Its riches are immense ; its annual revenue amounts 
to some six millions sterling, more than two-thirds of which is fixed 
income, the remainder being the result of voluntary effort. ^ 

The Anglican Church is subdivided into two ecclesiastical provinces 
— Canterbury and York — which are presided over by two archbishops 
who receive £15,000 and £10,000 a year respectively. Under these 
archiepiscopal chiefs there are thirty-three bishops whose incomes 
Tange from £2,000 to £10,000 a year; thirty deans who receive from 
£700 to £3,000 ; eighty-five archdeacons ; six hundred and thirteen 
rural-deans, and finally about thirteen thousand five hundred beneficed 
clergymen who are assisted by an army of curates. 2 The members 
of the Episcopal Bench are chosen by the Crown. Presentation, 
however, to the spiritual charge of a parish, belongs in the majority 
of cases to the largest proprietor of the district, as a legal right. 
This is called the right of presentation to a living, and it is by no 
means a rare thing to see the clerical office put up for sale at a public 
auction and adjudged to the highest bidder. 

The legislative power of the Church resides in Parliament. It is 
true, there exists, in each of the two ecclesiastical Provinces, an 
annual assembly or Convocation, constituted by the high dignitaries 
of the Church and by delegates from the rank and file of the clergy. 
But this clerical parliament of two Houses has little more than a 
deliberative power, and it may even be suspended or dissolved by an 
Act of Parliament. The Convocation of Canterbury, for instance, 
was virtually suspended in 1 7 1 7 on account of the sympathy which 
its principal members showed for the Stuarts ; and it was not officially 
reconstituted till i860. 

the English Episcopate. In one of the sittings of the Upper House of Convocation, 
held on the loth of May, 1883, the tendency of the movement was keenly criticised 
by the Bishops of Oxford, Rochester, Hereford, Chichester, and Lichheld. The last- 
mentioned prelate related, as the most recent eccentricities of the Salvationists in 
his diocese, that at Derby one of their captains had promised, by means of public 
bills, to stand on his head for ten minutes and preach the gospel. "And what is 
more," added his Lordship, "he kept his word." 

1 . This estimate of the income of the Established Church is too small ; eight 
millions would probably be nearer the mark. — Translator. 

2. The number of Bishops and other dignitaries mentioned here is corrected up 
to \%Z<i.— Translator. 



IN ORTHODOX PROTESTANTISM. 61 

This hierarchical and centralizing organization has not prevented 
the English Church from being always distracted by contending par- 
ties, among which it has been compelled to establish a compromise. 
At present these divergent tendencies are respectively represented by 
the High, Low, and Broad sections of the Church. 

The Low Church or Evangelical party which has developed itself 
along the lines traced out by Wesley and his Anglican followers, 
is closely related in doctrine to the sects which carry their reverence 
for the Scriptures to Bibliolatry and lay special stress upon the doc- 
trines of Redemption by the blood of Christ. Low Churchmen, 
who chiefly belong to the middle classes, have played an important 
part in all the great philanthropical movements of English society, 
since the close of the last century, as for instance in the agitation for 
the Abolition of Slavery, the Temperance Cause, the various associa- 
tions for the moral and material improvement of the lower classes, 
and the organization of Foreign Missions. It would be unjust, more- 
over, to disregard the claims which the members of this party possess, 
upon the gratitude of the public, for their activity in the foundation 
of schools, hospitals and various kinds of asylums. But the narrow- 
ness of its theological views weakens its influence, which pulpit minis- 
trations that turn almost exclusively on the flames of Hell and the 
Merits of the Atonement, are but little calculated to raise and 
strengthen. Hostile alike to Rationalism and to Ritualism, this party 
established in 1865 an organization entitled the Church Association, 
with a view to meet the expenses of prosecutions for heresy before 
the ecclesiastical Courts of the country. It is worthy of note that 
some of its partizans have continued their evolution in the direction 
of the Evangelical sects. Thus there was founded in 1849, the Free 
Church of England, which numbers at present forty congregations. 
Another Church, due to an analogous movement, but of American 
origin, the Reformed Episcopal Church, has also been extending 
itself in England since 1873, at the expense of the Low Church 
party. 

Now whilst the Low Church section of the clergy bases its teaching 
on the essentially Protestant principle of Justification by Faith, the 
High Church party, on the other hand, insists upon the authority of 
the Apostolic tradition, as this is embodied in the universal Church. 
This re-actionary and ritualistic school received a powerful impulse 



62 THE PROGRESS OF THOUGHT 

from the romantic movement which passed over Great Britain, as well 
as the rest of Europe, about 1830. A group of distinguished young 
men belonging to the University of Oxford, which has long personified 
in England, not only high literary culture, but also the most conser- 
vative social and religious tendencies — Dr. Pusey, Dr. Newman, the 
poet Keble, and Mr. Froude (the brother of the historian) — sought, 
by a series of small publications, which rapidly became popular under 
the general title of Tracts for the Times^ to extend to religious insti- 
tutions the fashion which prevailed everywhere else as a return to the 
conceptions and customs of the Middle Ages. In reality, this move- 
ment, which was destined to become associated with the name of 
Dr. Pusey, was far more than a simple return to the ancient liturgies 
and symbols of the Church. Its promoters, under the pretext of 
attributing to the traditions of the first si^ centuries the authority 
which the Reformed Churches merely concede to the decisions of 
the first Councils, set about extolling the invocation of the saints, the 
worship of the Virgin Mary, the re-establishment of the Mass, the 
celibacy of the clergy, auricular confession, the dogma of the Real 
Presence, 'the Roman doctrine of the sacraments, and finally, and 
above all, the supernatural prerogatives of the priesthood considered 
as a necessary agency between the worshipper and God.^ 

Ritualism has maintained its ground in the Established Church, 
where it shows itself chiefly to-day in the Gothic style of its architec- 
ture, in the richness of its sacerdotal vestments, and in the complicated 
symbolism of its ceremonies. It specially predominates in the Episcopal 
Church of Scotland, as a natural re-action against the Puritan bald- 
ness of the Calvinism which constitutes the doctrine of the Established 
Presbyterian Church.- It is only a tenth of the Anglican clergy who 
are members of the English Church Union. But the most logical and 

I. The position taken up by English Ritualism is almost identical with that of 
the Old Catholic party of Germany, since both profess a sort of Catholicism without 
acknowledging the Papacy. Still it is said that when Dr. Dollinger made advances 
to the Episcopal Church, with a view to some common ground of action, the 
Ritualists met his proposal with great reserve, if not with downright coldness. This 
circumstance arose from the fact that the two movements sprang from opposite 
tendencies of thought. Puseyism, for instance, is the starting point of a retrograde 
course, while Old Catholicism, on the other hand, is the commencement of a for- 
ward movement in the order of the evolution of the human mind. Thus their actual 
nearness of views is like the proximity of two trains advancing in opposite directions. 
— ( Vide Moncure Conway, A Study on the Lives of Sterling and Maurice.) 



IN ORTHODOX PROTESTANTISM. 63 

courageous partizans of the Tractarian movement did not halt midway 
in their retrogressive career, which, originating in a mistrust of modern 
civilization, tended to the very heart of the Ecclesiasticism of the 
Middle Ages. Hence, within ten years of the publication of the Tracts 
for the Times^ Dr. Newman, the most distinguished of the Puseyites, 
finished his evolution in the arms of the Roman Church, as Carlyle 
somewhere says, " like a child who has roamed all day on a silenced 
battlefield, going back at night to the breast of his dead mother." 

Dr. Newman is now a Cardinal, and the numerous conversions 
which followed his, not only in the ranks of the Anglican clergy, but from 
among the aristocracy, might have led to the supposition that a large 
section of English society was on the road to Canossa. Some of the 
advocates of scepticism in England have even applauded this movement 
as a confirmation of their favourite theory, that between Catholicism 
and irreligion there is no halting-place. But it seems that, like the 
Roman Church itself, they mistook their hopes for reality. Since 
its complete emancipation in Great Britain, Catholicism has specially 
directed its attention to the restoration of the rich and governing 
classes to its fold. Favoured by a certain fashion, it has succeeded in 
a few exceptional cases, which made a great noise at the time ; but it 
may be safely affirmed that the mass of the nation has not been even 
touched.^ 

Turning to the Latitudinarian or liberal section of the Anglican 
clergy, we find that it has formed, since the days of Coleridge, what 
is now called the Broad Church party. Coleridge, who, before his 

I . It would be of interest to determine whether the much-talked-of conversions 
of a few distinguished persons have not been amply compensated for by the losses 
of Romanism, in favour either of Protestantism or of Freethought. In 1780 the 
Catholics numbered only 70,000 in England, Scotland, and Wales; in 1880 they 
possessed more than 1,300,000 adherents. But in estimating the value of these 
figures, account must be taken of three distinct factors : (i) The natural develop- 
ment of the old Catholic families ; (2) the Catholics of jforeign origin and their 
descendants ; (3) the Catholics of Irish origin who have immigrated into England. 
This last factor alone accounts for about half the total number. Mr. G. F. Rawlin- 
son, indeed, goes so far as to maintain, in a statistical statement published in 1874, 
in the Geographical Magazine, that the conversions effected by Catholicism in Eng- 
land since the commencement of the century, do not compensate for its losses, if 
regard be had to the general increase of the population. At all events, it is an un- 
deniable fact that the number of Catholics in England and Wales, which in 1854 
amounted to 4-24 of the population, represented only 4*61 in 1866, and no more 
than 4'44 in 1877. — {Vide, Encyclopcsdia Britannica, under the Yi^zjdSn'g England. 



64 THE PROGRESS OF THOUGHT 

return to the Established Church, had re-habiUtated a theory of the 
Trinity, after the manner of Schelling, saw his method of dogmatic 
interpretation accepted with all the greater eagerness by the enlight- 
ened champions of Anglican doctrines, because the theology of the 
day had been roused to the need of adjusting itself to the require- 
ments of German idealism, and because the miraculous elements of 
Christianity were beginning to lose their hold upon public opinion. 
There was then seen to gradually rise a new form of Alexandrian 
mysticism, at once Christian and rationalistic, which made the divine 
immanence the central principle of Christianity ; enlarged the idea of 
Revelation to such an extent as to make of it a permanent and general 
gift of humanity ; and, finally, opened the door to the conception of 
an unlimited development of religious beliefs. 

The principal result of this theology has been the ever-increasing 
importance of Biblical exegesis. Even during the first half of the 
century, Dr. Arnold paved the way to larger views, but without throw- 
ing down the gauntlet to orthodoxy. It was only in the following 
generation that the conclusions of German criticism really penetrated 
into the English Church. In i860, for instance, seven distinguished 
writers, five of whom were clergymen, published, under the title of 
Essays and Reviews^ a volume which embodied the following scheme 
of thought : — (i) The necessity of reform in theology by the applica- 
tion of the historical and critical method to the science of religion ; 
(2) Emancipation from the literal and supernatural authority of the 
Bible; (3) Adhesion to the principle of development of religious 
beliefs in opposition to the assumed fixity of dogma.i 

This publication, which spread, under the aegis of the Establish- 
ment, the boldest results of contemporary criticism, caused a lively 
state of feeling in all the sections of Anglicanism ; the evangelical 
press denounced the innovators with the utmost vehemence, and more 
than two thousand clergymen demanded their expulsion from the 
Church. Dragged before all the ecclesiastical courts, the bold writers 
were none the less ultimately acquitted by the Privy Council, and this 
adjudication, followed some years later by the acquittal of Bishop 
Colenso, who had laid a sacreligious hand on the unity and antiquity 
of the Pentateuch, gave at last to religious criticism the right of abode 

I. Vide, in the Revue des Deux Mondes of June, 1875, an article by M. Albert 
Reville, on Liberal Anglicanism. 



IN ORTHODOX PROTESTANTISM. 65 

in Anglican theology. ^ One of the essayists, Dr. Temple, is now 
Bishop of Exeter; 2 and another, Professor Jowett, has been recently 
made Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford. 

It has been said that the Broad Church party forms but a brilliant 
staff without a following. But this group of superior and learned men 
exercise none the less a profound influence on the general tone of 
Anglican theology. It is to them that the latter owes its increasing 
repugnance to insist upon the miraculous aspects of religion, as well 
as its tendency to explain the origin and development of Christianity 
without recourse to supernatural agencies. 

Even the rationalistic criticism of the school which has sought to 
free itself from embarrassment, by mutilating the Biblical narrative in 
order to obtain from it a meaning in conformity with the affirmations 
of science, finds itself completely antiquated to-day. "There were 
and are — said Dean Stanley at the funeral of Sir Charles Lyell— two 
modes of reconciUation which have each totally and deservedly failed. 
The one attempts to wrest the words of the Bible from their real 
meaning, and force them to speak the language of science ; and the 
other attempts to falsify science in order to meet the supposed require- 
ments of the Bible." 

The time has passed in which all was regarded as saved when the 
" days" of Genesis had been transformed into geological periods, when 
the alleged priority of light to the sun had been explained as due to 
the thickness of the atmospheric vapours which prevailed during the 
early ages of the earth's history, and when the most questionable 
passages of the Old Testament were interpreted as allegories possessed 
of a lofty morality. Even Dr. Arnold went so far as to declare that 
there is a poetic element in the earlier pages of Sacred History, and 
there are but few eminent theologians in the English Church to-day, 

1. I know of few signs more significant of the progress made by public opinion 
in this matter than the dinner given in honour of Professor Kuenen, when that 
eminent Dutch critic was invited by the managers of the Hibbert Trust to deliver a 
series of lectures on the growth of the great systems of religion. All shades of 
religious opinion in England were represented at the banquet, from Agnosticism to 
Catholicism, inclusive of Jews, Unitarians, and ministers of the Established Church. 
Mr. Moncure Conway, who, as one of the guests, described this banquet with much 
humour in a contribution to the Boston Index of June the 15th, 1882, justly observes 
that it marks an entire revolution of theological opinion. 

2. At the beginning of 1885 Dr. Temple was elevated to the See of London, as 
successor to Dr. Jackson. — Translator. 

F 



bb THE PROGRESS OF THOUGHT 

who do not regard the Biblical narrative as the fruit of an inspiration 
which, though certainly divine in its source, has been registered by 
human and therefore fallible interpreters. 

Thus the bishop, who presided over the recent Anglican Congress 
held at Melbourne in Australia, said, in his inaugural address, that we 
should seek to state the whole truth respecting the Bible, and not leave 
any room for the accusation of the opponents of religion, who charge 
us with refusing to admit that there is a human element in the sacred 
books.^ From this position to that of regarding the Gospels and the 
rest of the New Testament as forming a work superior in quality, but 
identical in kind to the religious literature of other ancient peoples, 
there is but a step which it is easy for a school of theologians to take, 
who consider the incarnation of the Divine in human consciousness 
as a natural and universal fact. 

Even the intervention of Providence in the course of human affairs 
or in the evolution of natural phenomena has been openly called in 
question in the Established Church. The American journal, the 
Index, of the 15th of June, 1882, rightly mentioned, as a sign of pro- 
gress in the ideas of the clergy, the fact that an Australian bishop 
had just previously refused to authorize the use of pubUc prayer for 
rain, alleging that atmospheric changes are regulated by the laws of 
nature, and that if the piously disposed desired a remedy for drought, 
they would do well to improve the system of irrigation. 

It is noteworthy, moreover, that the dogmas of the churches are 
following in the train of the Miracles. Speaking generally the doc- 
trines of the Fall and of the Atonement are as far as possible passed 
over in silence by the Broad Church clergy. As to the doctrines not 
formally mentioned in the Thirty-Nine Articles, such as Eternal 
Punishment, the existence of a Personal Devil and the like — these 
they do not hesitate to contradict and at times condemn. Between 
the Trinity as it is conceived of by Dr. Martineau among the Unitar- 
ians, and by the late Dean Stanley among the Anglicans, there is 
scarcely the thickness of the paper on which the Thirty-Nine Articles 
are written, and age has terribly thinned that venerable document.^ 

1. Times, ]a.nua.ry 4., 1883. 

2. Compare Dr. Martineau's pamphlet, T/ie Three Stages of Unitarian Theology 
(ist Edition, London, 1879), with an article published by Dean Stanley in the 
XIX. Century of Aug., 1880, under the title of The Creed of the Early Christians. 



IN ORTHODOX PROTESTANTISM. 67 

Hence we need feel no astonishment that a minister of the Anglican 
Church, the Rev. C. Maurice Davies, when describing the heterodox 
congregations of London, should have hesitated to characterise the 
general position of Unitarianism by this term, " except for etymological 
reasons." " Between them, he adds, and some of our more advanced 
clergy in the EstabHshment, there is little difference. "^ The Christian 
Standard^ an orthodox journal, has spoken out still more explicitly on 
the subject. " Unitarians," he said in September 1876, " have posses- 
sion to a great extent of the pulpits of the Church of England. Broad 
Churchism is an interchangeable phrase for Unitarianism,'' and this in 
many cases known to ourselves." It is true the Christian Standard 
is an organ of the Dissenters, but its sincerity is shown by its hastening 
to state that, in Nonconformist, as well as in Anglican pulpits, there 
are a considerable number of Unitarians, that is to say men who 
profess Unitarian opinions. 

Such is the general situation which the Bishop of Rochester recently 
characterised by professing his profound satisfaction that the Church 
was ea^h day becoming broader and more liberal. Still it is a question 
that may be asked, how sincere minds are able to reconcile this breadth 
of opinions with their acceptance of the doctrines which serve as the 
official basis of the Establishment. It is clear, indeed, that the existing 
beliefs of the Broad Church party are in antagonism to the spirit if 
not to the letter of the Thirty-Nine Articles .2 

The learned Dean of Westminster presents the doctrine of the Trinity there as a 
formula expressive of the comprehensiveness and diversity of the Divine Essence, 
According to him, the Three Persons are simply the three revelations, the three 
modes by which God manifests himself in turn, in nature, in history, and in the 
human soul. In illustration of this he says — *' There are in the sanctuaries of the 
old churches in the East, on Mount Athos, sacred pictures intended to represent the 
doctrine of the Trinity. As the spectator stands on one side he sees only the figure 
of our Saviour on the Cross; as he stands on the other side, he sees only the 
Heavenly Dove ; as he stands in front he sees only the Ancient of Days, the Eternal 
Father." — It needed less than this to make Calvin send Servetus to the stake. 

1. Heterodox London^ Vol. I., p. 311. 

2. Since this vi^ork was written, three books have been published in England 
which may be advantageously mentioned here as bearing on the subject. Taking 
them in their chronological order, there is first Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 
by Professor Drummond, a work which has caused some considerable stir in the 
theological world from its bold attempt to rehabilitate Calvinism in the guise of 
modern science. The author says in his preface: "The real problem I have set 
myself may be stated in a sentence. Is there not reason to believe that many of 
the laws of the Spiritual World, hitherto regarded as occupying an entirely separate 



68 THE PROGRESS OF THOUGHT 

It would be a mistake, however, to see in this logical inconsistency 
simply the effect of material considerations, or any want of moral 
courage. Such weaknesses are doubtless to be met with in the 
Anglican Establishment, as well as in all other Churches ; but a 
suspicion of the kind cannot for a moment be entertained of such 
men as Stanley, Temple, Rowland Williams, Kingsley, and Colenso. 
The truth is, that with the Broad Church clergy the sentiment of 
religious communion predominates over all questions of dogma. Their 

province, are simply the laws of the Natural "World ? Can we identify the natural 
laws, or any of them, in the spiritual sphere?" — So much for the problem ; here is 
what the reader is told as to the need of its solution — " The effect of the introduc- 
tion of Law among the scattered phenomena- of nature has simply been to make 
\ science, to transform knowledge into eternal truth. The same crystallising touch is 
needed in Religion. Can it be said that the phenomena of the Spiritual World are 
other than scattered ? Can we shut our eyes to the fact that the religious opinions 
of mankind are in a state of flux ? And when we regard the uncertainty of current 
beliefs, the war of creeds, the havoc of inevitable as well as idle doubt, and the 
reluctant abandonment of early faith by those who would cherish it longer if they 
could, is it not plain that the one thing thinking men are waiting for is the intro- 
duction of Law among the phenomena of the Spiritual World? When that comes, 
we shall offer to such men a truly scientific theology. And the reign of Law will 
transform the whole Spiritual World, as it has already transformed the Natural 
World." — But no sooner does Professor Drummond set about solving the problem 
of which he thus speaks, than he shows he is far from being the strong and faithful 
guide the words just quoted would lead everyone to suppose. In short it is soon 
seen that he makes shipwreck on the rock of false analogies ; and that influenced 
by prejudice he has cast aside the calm caution of the scientific spirit and become a 
theological dogmatist. " Why a virtuous man," he says, " should not simply grow 
better and better until in his own right he enters the Kingdom of God, is what 
thousands honestly and seriously fail to understand. Now Philosophy cannot help 
us here. Her arguments are, if anything, against us. But Science answers to the 
appeal at once. If it be simply pointed out that this is the same absurdity as to 
ask why a stone should not grow more and more living till it enters the organic 
world, the point is clear in an instant." Surely, however, this illustration involves 
the astounding assumption that man is not an organic whole ; that spiritual pheno- 
mena are not a part of his being, as well as mental. And where is the proof of such 
an assumption ? The Law of Biogenesis, which is here taken as typical of the 
theological doctrine that "the spiritual man is no mere development of the natural 
man," but "anew creation born from above," merely asserts that organic life 
is a thing apart in nature. But it does not show that a plant or one of the inferior 
animals cannot attain to the perfection of its being without the importation of some 
principle foreign to its essence, and by a process beyond the lines of its organic 
development. Besides, what is false to Philosophy cannot be true to Science, since, 
as Mr. Herbert Spencer explains. Philosophy is merely the science of sciences. 

The second of the works in question— 77/^ Mystery of the Universe our Co^nmon 
Faith — is by a London clergyman, who is a Prebendary of St. Paul's, and the 
author of one or two similar works which have been well received in the orthodox 
section of the theological world. The aim and scope of the book will be best 



IN ORTHODOX PROTESTANTISM. 69 

dream is that of an ecclesiastical organization broad enough to com- 
prise all the forms of Christianity, from Unitarianism, which would 
in reality strengthen their own tendencies, to the most orthodox Dis- 
senters, who would swell the ranks of the Low Church party, while 
the Ritualists might be allowed to follow their special preferences for 
an ornate service. 

In support of this view, they contend that such a state of things 
constitutes the true function and the sole justification of an Established 
Church. That a church cannot be a truly National Church if it is 
not sufficiently comprehensive to satisfy all the spiritual wants of the 
nation and to concentrate all the resources of the religious sentiment, 
on what Mr. Matthew Arnold calls "the promotion of goodness," 
that is, the moral improvement of society. Which therefore is the 

7 

understood from the following words: — "The suspicion that verified science and 
the articles of our Common Faith are at variance, causes mistrust concerning those 
dogmas which Holy Scripture requires us to believe : mistrust — painful as to the 
present, and perilous as to the future. So to employ science as to throw light on 
the physical constitution of the universe, and bring out clearly the great facts and 
doctrines which accord our intellectual and emotional experience, is the emphatic 
requirement of this generation from our thinkers. Unification of all knowledge in 
one verified system, a philosophy that combines theology and philosophy, that re- 
veals the Mystery of the Universe, is not beyond the power of human reason ; in 
any case we may pursue it as an ideal .... Spirit is not the sublimate of 
matter. Vast and various departments of being lie within one domain of existence. 
All forces are the radii of one Energy, all divergences start from one centre. 
Love is a force not less constraining than gravity : each in its own sphere of opera- 
tion. The agency, everywhere at work, is the symbol of the One Living Presence: 
the source of all power and life and order. Theology declares this truth in one 
language ; science in another. The Word and Work, without confusion, testify to 
mystery ; to the one Principle underlying all things, present everywhere. " — This 
promises well, but Mr. Reynolds's book, like Nattiral Law in the Spiritual World, 
is extremely disappointing. He does not really grasp the spirit of science — truth 
for its own sake — nor does he employ its methods. Here are one or two illustra- 
tions of this : " It was not the whole Trinity which became personally united with 
our nature (in Christ), but the Word which was made flesh ; so that two natures, 
the Divine and human, became one Person : the Eternal son is the Incarnate Son. 
. . . . The two natures so formed one person — sustained by food, yet omni- 
potent ; requiring outward light, though inwardly possessed of the glory of Godhead 
— that we find the human aspect wholly man and discern our brother ; we discover 
the Divine reality and worship God. . . . Moses, dwelling in a land of sun- 
worshippers, experiencing every day the power of that sun, could neither be 
ignorant nor forgetful of the influence of solar heat and light in promoting vegeta- 
tion. That he should speak of vegetation, as apart from that influence — vegetation 
wholly different to that which Egypt and the Wilderness produced — can only be 
accounted for by a knowledge surpassing his time, advancing from nature to nature's 
God . As giving a statement of creation that accords with accurate modern science, 



70 THE PROGRESS OF THOUGHT 

right course for them to take ? Should they quit the Establishment, 
because they find themselves in antagonism with certain details of a 
constitution elaborated more than three centuries ago, in a current of 
religious thought which has disappeared to-day ; or indeed stay in its 
ranks, in conformity "with the true spirit of the institution, in order to 
maintain therein the right of free inquiry and, perhaps, prepare in 
this way the return of England to religious unity, but, this time, by 
means of liberty and progress ? 

This reasoning does not lack a certain force and the conception it 
involves is not without grandeur, although it finds no place for the 

he is a man most wonderful. ... It (the Bible) touches on every science, is 
wholly unscientific, yet has never been proved in error." — These short extracts 
suffice to denote the position Mr. Reynolds occupies. His book, indeed, though 
rich in the best materials and marked by great inspirational power, is by no means 
fitted to perform the task it claims to accomplish. 

The third of the works alluded to in this note — The Scientific Obstacles to 
Christian Belief: Boyle Lectures for 1884, by Canon Curteis, Professor of New 
Testament Exegesis in King's College, London, is a much higher order of produc- 
tion. Though specially designed to establish the truth of the doctrines of 
Christianity, and therefore necessarily of a controversial character, it is written with 
a degree of spiritual insight and philosophical candour, which is calculated to make 
it the starting-point of a new era in the English Church. The author sees that 
something must be given up, and he is willing to surrender many of the old out- 
works, as for instance the necessity for the belief in Miracles, in order that the 
citadel of spiritual truth may be the more readily defended and retained. In 
relation to the sceptical spirit of the age, his words are : — " We possess, on the one 
hand, an analysing, subdividing, restless questioning power in the Intellect ; we 
have, on the other hand, a formative, simplifying, synthetic power in the Imagina- 
tion. The movements of the intellect are rapid, incessant, mordant, disintegrating, 
and, by themselves, merely destructive. Interminable and illimitable investigation 
is their proper function; and w'ithout their salutary check forms of thought once 
established, would remain eternally fixed ; customs and dogmas and formulae once 
accepted would refuse all change and all purification .... Thus the work 
of the pure Intellect is throughout analytical and discriminative. And whenever 
weary of its eternal investigations, it would pause and clothe with shapeliness and 
beauty its heaps of crude materials, it is obliged at once to awaken its companion 
and to borrow help from the Imagination." With respect to the question, why 
should "That only which satisfies the htiman mind be regarded as true?" 
Canon Curteis says : — " This, as everybody knows, is« the standing question of 
Philosophy. And it were well that it should now-a-days be answered out of hand, 
and be finally laid to rest. For after all that has been written and thought and 
said for ages upon the subject, there really can no longer be any reasonable doubt 
about the answer, nor any hesitation in affirming plainly that the human mind has 
nothing whatever to do with absolute and outside truth : that it is but a mirror 
constructed to image forth the universe in a manner impressive and useful and 
delightful to us; and that its presentment is relative, not absolute truth. And 
since we can never get behind ourselves, cannot see except with the eye, nor think 



IN ORTHODOX PROTESTANTISM. 71 

Catholics or for the adherents of religious organizations beyond the 
lines of Christianity, such as Jews, Theists, and Comtists. Even as 
early as the seventeenth century, Chillingworth justified his entrance 
into the Church, by alleging that it was sufficient for a clergyman to 
adhere in a general way to the doctrines of the Establishment, and 
that he accepted the Thirty-Nine Articles as a treaty of peace. But 
it is none the less true that if Politics live by compromises, because 
they depend upon the accommodation of doctrines to facts. Religion 
which operates exclusively in the sphere of principle, demands from 
its very nature, sincerity of conviction and the logic of character. 

Whatever sympathetic feeling may prompt us to interpret the con- 
stitution of a Church in the broadest sense, we must admit that 
neither conscience nor thought can develop itself freely, so long as 
they are constantly coming into collision with a compulsory creed. 
The situation, indeed, is becoming more and more false, within the 
pale of the Church, for those who, having renounced the super- 
natural, desire to preach what they actually believe, and to no longer 
teach what they have ceased to believe. They are incessantly drawn 
on, in spite of themselves, to making compromises, which, if they do 
not lead to the falsification of the expression of thought, none the 
less produce unconscious subtleties. Numerous decisions, given by 
the ecclesiastical courts, have shown, moreover, even in recent days, 
that there are limits to free inquiry in the Established Church ; and 
though Bishop Colenso escaped all condemnation for heresy, this 
was due to a flaw in ecclesiastical legislation, which did not con- 
template having to pronounce judgment upon the opinions of a 
bishop. 

The remedy for this false position would be found in the suppres- 

except with the brain, it is obvious that the very first and most essential act in all 
our mental work must be an act of pure Faith— ^azV/^ in the sufficiency of our 
faculties, faith in the approximate veracity (for all practical purposes) of our mental 
mirror, faith in the gift we possess of interpreting all things in terms of our own 
mind, complete in its triple functions of Intellect, Imagination, and Conscience." 
— It is easy to see the importance of this far-reaching principle, both as regards the 
evolution of religious thought and the claims of Scepticism. Those who accept it 
must give up dogmatising about what lies beyond the ken of human faculty, and 
remember, with Mr. Spencer, that all our conceptions of God, as the Ultimate 
Existence, are merely symbols ; while the negative dogmatist will find it equally 
opposed to his unfortunate habit of measuring the depths of the universe by the 
sounding-line of his own surface-bound conceptions. — Translatoj'. 



72 THE PROGRESS OF THOUGHT 

sion of all declaration of allegiance to dogmatic Christianity. As 
early as 1772, more than 250 clergymen and eminent laymen of the 
Church of England, petitioned Parliament in order to obtain its sanc- 
tion that the admission to Holy Orders should not necessitate a sub- 
scription to the Thirty-Nine Articles. The Episcopal Church of 
Ireland entered upon this permissive course from the moment of the 
rupture of its relations with the State, by suppressing obligatory 
adherence to the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed. The 
Episcopal Church of America has gone a step further than this by 
omitting the creed in question from its liturgy. Hence it may be 
confidently stated, that the disappearance of the creed at present 
implied in the Thirty-Nine Articles is simply a matter of time.^ The 
only question is whether this reform will take place before the destruc- 
tion of the Establishment, that is, the dissolution of the bond which 
unites the Church to the State : and here we come to another of the 
principal problems which the present condition of Anglicanism pre- 
sents. 

The official status of the Established Church was calculated, as a 
matter of course, to provoke attack from both Dissenters and Free- 
thinkers. Some forty years ago, this opposition assumed the form of 
an Anti-State Church Association, which has become to-day the Society 
for Liberating Religion from State control, or simply the Liberation 
Society. As a matter of fact, the agitation for the separation of 
Church and State has lost something of its intensity since the dis- 
appearance of the privileges of the Anglican Church, with regard .to 
marriages, funerals and public education. Still political circumstances 
may, at any moment, give a new impulse to this movement, and it is 
very doubtful whether even the Abolition of the Thirty-Nine Articles 
would prevent its final triumph ; for if the Establishment became 
broad enough to embrace all the sects of Protestantism, it would even 
then be questionable whether they would consent to enter it.2 

1. The Inquirer of the 31st of INIarch, 1883, stated that a parish meeting of St. 
James's (West Derby), had just previously passed a resolution requesting the minister 
to no longer recite the Athanasian Creed during the services, and pledging them- 
selves to pay the costs of any prosecution which nfiight be undertaken against him. 

2. There are many thoughtful men of liberal tendencies in the Nonconformist 
communions who believe the cause of truth and the interests of civilization would be 
far better served by reforming the Church, and making it really National, than by 
destroying it as an Establishment. — Translator. 



IN ORTHODOX PROTESTANTISM. 73 

But it may be asked whether the Episcopal Church would not have 
more to gain than to lose in the disruption of its connection with 
the State. It would doubtless have to give up a portion of the im- 
mense wealth which it monopolizes to-day. Still, is it really necessary 
in order to preserve the vitality or even the prestige of that Church, 
that it should have at its head an Episcopal Body whose annual in- 
come amounts to about £160,000, apportioned to but little over thirty 
members ? In England, however, reforms generally proceed by means 
of compromise; it is, therefore, highly probable that the Church 
would be allowed to retain, over and above the fabrics themselves, a 
part of its revenues, proportionate to the number of its members and 
the extent of its requirements. If, moreover, some of its privileges 
should disappear, this need not diminish its vitality or limit its use- 
fulness; for in what respect could its true religious interests be 
served by the maintenance of parochial charges without congregations, 
as in villages where almost the entire population belongs to Noncon- 
formist communions ? 

On the other hand, if its prelates have to give up their seats in the 
House of Lords, if its liturgy is no longer allowed to exclusively 
figure in public ceremonies, will not the Church gain in return for 
this, an independence, well worth the loss of a certain amount of 
wealth and some few honours ? Is it not an absurd spectacle to see 
its religious beliefs regulated in the last resort by Parliament, in which 
there are Dissenters, Catholics, Jews and Agnostics, and where to- 
morrow there will doubtless also be Atheists ? 

It will certainly be felt as a hardship after having been the Church 
of England, to be nothing more than one of the sects of English 
Protestantism. Still these sects have shown by their example that, 
even in the matter of faith, liberty is superior to protection, since in 
spite of persecution, poverty, social discredit and inferiority of re- 
sources and talent, they have succeeded in equalling, if not in sur- 
passing, by the number and activity of their adherents, the powerful 
religious organization which had, as the heritage of its predecessor, 
the monopoly of the higher education, the patronage of the ruling 
classes and the support of public authority. There exists, moreover, 
a fact which should reassure the Episcopal Church of England, as to 
the religious consequences of Disestablishment. In Ireland, where 



74 THE PROGRESS OF THOUGHT 

the Establishment was suppressed on the ist of January, 1871,1 the 
Episcopal Church, which numbered only 1 1 -9 of the whole popula- 
tion, had increased by the end of 1880 to 12*3 per cent, or 635,670 
members, the entire number of inhabitants being estimated in 1881 
at 5,159,839 persons. 

The part which the Established Church has not succeeded in play- 
ing among the lower classes has devolved chiefly upon the Dissenting 
sects, born of the anti-dogmatic and anti- formalist inspiration which 
constitutes the popular characteristic of Protestantism. 

The Methodists, though of recent origin, form to-day the most 
important of the sects. Methodism sprang from the evangelical move- 
ment which was commenced by John Wesley in 1739, -in the very 
heart of the English Church. Its adherents, who were estimated at 
76,978 -in the year 1791, when Wesley died, consist to-day of about 
800,000 active members in Great Britain, with something like a 
million-and-a-half of children in its Sunday schools. The denomina- 
tion is divided into several secondary bodies, such as Wesleyans, 
Primitive Methodists, Methodists of the New Connexion, United 
Methodists, &c. Each of these organizations is governed by a Con- 
ference, whose members are elected by the congregations of certain 
districts. The Methodists are noted for their participation in the 
various charitable and moral agencies carried on by society, and they 
have devoted at times as much as ^160,000 to their foreign missions 
in a single year. 

More or less connected with the Methodists in doctrine and practice 
there is a considerable group of congregations which confine them- 
selves to claiming for their adherents the belief in the supernatural 
Christ of the Evangelists, and whose members refuse to accept the 
brand of any sect whatever. Some of these are simply registered as 
" Unsectarians," or as " Christians owning no name but that of the 
Lord Jesus," or again as " Christians who object to be otherwise 

I. In consequence of the measure passed in 1869 for the disestablishment of the 
Episcopal Church in Ireland, the State has resumed possession of all the property 
and revenue which it had conceded to that Church ; but it left to it all the endow- 
ments which had been the result of private generosity since 1660. And further, it 
guaranteed to the actual holders of ecclesiastical preferments an annual sum for life, 
equal to the income previously derived from their office. Almost all the recipients 
capitalized this annuity on behalf of the Church, which thus found itself in possession 
of a part of its old resources. 



IN ORTHODOX PROTESTANTISM. 75 

designated." The same spirit prevails in the numerous revivals which 
at times end in the creation of new sects, but which, as a rule, respect 
the denominational connections of those who temporarily take part in 
their proceedings. Such is also equally the case with the Salvation 
Army, which draws its adherents from among the least educated in 
the sects which are possessed of an evangelical tendency, and from 
among a similar class who, as " unbelievers," are beyond the pale of 
all the sects. ^ 

The English Baptists are neither less popular nor less active than 
the Methodists. They claim to number a million of adherents in the 
denomination, about 298,900 of whom have submitted to the rite of 
baptism. This rite they restrict to adults and administer by immersion, 
as the reader may be aware. They are the historical representatives 
of the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century, and they even claim a 
direct connection with the Apostolic churches by means of the 
Vaudois, the Cathari, the Paulicians, the Donatists, the Novatians, 
the Montanists, and the Euchites of the second century. Still their 
principal development dates merely from the last century. They 
boast that they are the only sect which has been persecuted every- 
where, but has itself persecuted nowhere. Their churches, which 
number over 3,500 in Great Britain, are independent of each other. 
They have in their Sunday schools 401,517 children, and spend on 
an average ;£'2oo,ooo per annum in missionary and benevolent efforts. 
It is from their body that the first Foreign Protestant Missions sprang. 
This was in 1792. In theological opinions they are less rigid than 
the Methodists ; Arminianism prevails in a great number of their 
churches, Calvinism in perhaps a still larger number, while a few 
border on Socinian and Unitarian doctrines. 

The Presbyterians and the Independents, who are the representatives 
of the old Calvinistic Puritanism, have not increased in the same 
proportion as several of the other communions. In Scotland, Presby- 
terianism is the Established form of religion,^ but in England the 

I. At the annual meeting of the Salvation Army held in London during the 
month of May, 1883, "General" Booth stated that the Army comprised about a 
million-and-a-half of members, divided into 491 different corps. The annual revenue 
of the organization amounted to more than ;^ 120, 000. During the meeting in ques: 
tion, a sum of ;^io,ooo was subscribed. 

2. . A secession from the official Church (the Kirk of Scotland) took place in 
1843, which led to the formation of a Free Church (the Free Kirk). This latter 



76 * THE PROGRESS OF THOUGHT 

denomination possesses only 275 congregations, with 56,099 members. 
In Ireland, on the other hand, it forms one of the most extended 
Protestant sects, for it possesses there 485,503 adherents. 

Presbyterianism is essentially Calvin istic in its organization and in 
its doctrines. Each of its congregations is under the charge of a 
minister, who is assisted by elders. The congregations of certain 
defined districts are governed by Presbyteries^ which are assemblies 
formed of the ministers of the district, and of a layman for each 
parish. The Presbyteries in turn, are united into Provincial Synods ; 
and these latter again are subordinate to a General Assembly, com- 
posed on the same principle, that is partly of ecclesiastics and partly 
of laymen. Presbyterian worship is distinguished, especially in Scot- 
land by its baldness : there is no organ, no liturgy, no altar, no eccle- 
siastical robes and no religious emblems. The churches, which are 
devoid ~oi all architectural and artistic adornment, look like mere 
assembly rooms. In England, however, the Presbyterians tend more 
and more to deviate from the old rigidity, both as regards the form 
and the substance of worship. 

The Congregationalists, who are the historical descendants of 
the old Independents, differ from the Presbyterians in but little more 
than the absolute autonomy of their churches. Their ministers have 
no need of special ordination ; any person who is invited by a con- 
gregation secures through this choice the right of preaching and 
administering the sacraments. The overwhelming majority of the 
Congregational churches are connected by an organization, consisting 
of delegates, and known as the Congregational Union ; but this asso- 
ciation exercises no authority over the individual congregations. It has 
no other object, indeed, than to facilitate an interchange of opinion 
and to organize common action among the churches for philanthropical 
and kindred purposes. The Congregationalists possess in Great Britain 
14 colleges for the education of their ministers and 4,158 places of 
worship. 

holds the same principles and adopts the same organization as the official Church ; 
it merely rejects the right of patronage, which at the time of the secession still 
existed in the Church of Scotland to the advantage of certain feudal proprietors. 
To-day, in both Churches alike, every congregation posseses the right of choosing 
its ovi^n ministers from among regularly ordained candidates. It may be worth 
noting that the secession just mentioned has greatly weakened the principle of union 
between the Church and the State ; it is quite possible, indeed, that the disestablish- 
ment of the Church of Scotland is not far distant. 



IN ORTHODOX PROTESTANTISM. 77 

Passing over the Unitarians, of whom we shall speak further on, 
we come to the Quakers, or Society of Friends, with 17,977 members; 
the Swedenborgians, or New Jerusalem Church, with 64 congrega- 
tions and 4,987 registered adherents; the Moravian Brethren, with 
32 Chapels and about 5,000 members; the Irvingites, with 19 Churches; 
the Adventists, who are looking for the second coming of Christ ; the 
UniverSalists, who believe in the final salvation of all men ; the Ply- 
mouth Brethren, who claim to form the sole Church of God; the 
Christadelphians, who deny the doctrine of the Trinity as well as 
the immortality of the soul, and who look for an early re-establish- 
ment of a divine kingdom at Jerusalem; the Sandemanians, or 
Glassites, who give each other the holy kiss in their worship; the 
Peculiar People, who have gained a notoriety by refusing to take 
precautionary measures for the prevention of epidemics, and even to 
call in the aid of a doctor when their children are ill ; the Mormons, 
or Latter-Day Saints, who, according to Whitaker's Ahiianack^ possess 
82 places of worship in Great Britain ; and, finally, to make use of 
the official terms of the Census, " the believers in the divine visitation 
of Johanna Southcote, the Prophetess of Exeter," without reckoning 
the not less eccentric, but more ephemeral, sects which are born and 
die almost every day. 

But though all these denominations look upon themselves as Pro- 
testant Dissenters, they play for the most part but a very subordinate 
role in the bosom of Nonconformity. This must be studied in the 
Calvinistic and Evangelical communions, which represent the Puritan 
tradition. It will then be seen to possess both the merits and the 
defects which I have already spoken of as the characteristics of the 
Low Church party : great strictness of life, philanthropy of the most 
developed kind, an extreme distrust of sacerdotal intrusion, with a 
keen sense of personal independence and of religious equality ; but at 
the same time, a narrow view of life, a studied aversion of all scien- 
tific progress opposed to the claims of orthodoxy, slavery to the letter 
of the Bible, an exaggerated sense of sin and a tendency to look at 
the gloomy side of religion. It may be remarked that the Noncon- 
formists constitute in politics the great bulk of Liberal electors, and 
that this suffices to explain the opposition which has been offered, 
even under the most progressive Government, to every attempt to 



78 THE PROGRESS OF THOUGHT 

encroach upon the legal observation of the Sunday, even when it is 
merely a question of opening picture galleries and museums. 

Still even the most rigidly orthodox of the sects have not been able 
to remain absolutely uninfluenced by the progressive thought of the 
age. Here is Dr. Martineau's testimony to this fact, as expressed in 
1876 : — 1 *' Without any loss of the fervour and spiritual depth of an 
earlier age and with unabated resort to scriptural imagery and expres- 
sion, their foremost ministers no longer speak in the sense of the seven- 
teenth century. They have put new wine into the old bottles and the 
bursting has yet to come. There have been occasionally instances 
of avowed theological change . . . and occasional explosions of 
frightened conservatism .... But these conspicuous examples 
afford no measure of the silent movement which is shifting the whole 
body into a different stratum of the theological atmosphere, and lessen- 
ing the interval between the Puritan and the Rationalist modes of 
religious thought." We have ourselves stated above in the language 
of the Christian Standard that the organs of orthodoxy recognise 
the same fact, while deploring its existence. 

There is not a denomination with whom belief in the miraculous 
is not declining. Even the Presbyterians of Scotland form no ex- 
ception, as shown, of late, by the notorious trials for heresy, which 
were instituted against both ministers and professors of theology in 
that Church. ' The Scotch correspondent of the British and Foreign 
Unitarian Association stated in 1882 that the rights of Biblical 
criticism were beginning to be admitted in the Churches in Scotland. 
** It is hard," he adds, " to resist the conviction that it cannot be a 
very distant date, when by the consent of the people, the ' standards' 
will be abandoned and a decided step be taken in our direction, if 
not altogether into our own position."^ 

A more recent circumstance shows that this opinion was well 
founded. On the 14th of January, 1883, the • Unitarian Church, at 
Aberdeen, held its anniversary services. Among the ministers present 
on the occasion, in addition to those of the Unitarian body, were a 
Congregationalist and the Rev. — Macdonald, a minister of the 

1. Introduction to the Rev. J. J. Tayler's work : A Retrospect of the Religious 
Life of England^ p. 26. 

2. British and Foreign Unitarian Association's Report for 1882. 



IN ORTHODOX PROTESTANTISM. 79 

Established Presbyterian Church. After an address by the Rev. 
Frank Walters, on the progress of Rationalism in the Church of 
Scotland, the Presbyterian minister addressed the meeting and 
declared that his Church owed much to the Unitarians for having 
drawn their attention to the practical side of religion. " They had 
compelled Presbyterians," he added, "to remember that whatever 
they might ultimately make out in the supernatural direction, there 
lay much nearer to them what was more useful, interesting and per- 
haps, in the long run, more influential in determining the moral 
character and elevating the spiritual nature, than the supernatural, and 
that was the natural." These are noble and significant words which 
his Congregationalist colleague supported by saying that "as year after 
year went by he thought less of theology and more of religion, "i 

This tendency of the Churches to approach each other upon com- 
mon ground has of necessity aided in softening down the old sectarian 
antagonisms, and has allowed the various religious bodies to unite 
their eiforts in matters of general progress, in which they are pursuing 
the same end. The exchange of pulpits, formerly limited to ministers 
of the same denomination, has now, in many cases, crossed the 
barriers of sect. Hence, Dean Stanley was seen to place his Cathedral 
at the disposition of ministers beyond the pale of the AngHcan com- 
munion, while he himself preached in Presbyterian Churches in 
Scotland. On the occasion of the Congress of Congregational 
Churches, held at Bristol in 1882, a deputation of Anglican ministers 
attended to publicly testify, as they said, to the good work which the 
Congregationalists were doing in the spread of the fundamental truths 
of the Divine law, and to bear witness to their piety and zeal, as well 
as to the ability and eloquence of their ministers. The address con- 
cluded by an appeal on behalf of the fraternal union of all those who 
are aiming at the establishment of the reign of Christian justice on 
the earth. 

Not only when it is a question of obtaining funds to aid in the 
alleviation of some great public misfortune, or to organize a crusade 
against intemperance and misery, are the leaders of the different 
Churches to be seen exercising their influence in common efforts; 
but even in matters relating exclusively to forms of faith they none of 

I. The Inquirer, of] a.mx2Lxy 2^11:1, 1883. 



80 THE PROGRESS OF THOUGHT, ETC. 

them hold, as in the recent persecution of the Jews in Russia, when 
they did not hesitate to unite in promoting a charitable manifestation, 
which was a genuine protest of the public conscience against the 
religious intolerance of a past age.^ Even some years earlier than 
this, on the initiation of the Evangelical Alliance, a large number of 
Nonconformist ministers signed an address conjointly with the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, to protest, in the name of the principles of the 
Reformation, against the persecutions which the Swedish Government 
was inflicting upon the Roman Catholics of that country. 

Would it be safe to conclude from all this that the various sects of 
British Protestantism are on the eve of uniting on a common religious 
platform, as they have already done in the domain of philanthropic 
and moral effort? This is very doubtful. For it must not be forgotten 
that in Nonconformist Churches, as much, or perhaps even more than 
in the Established Church, creeds remain an obstacle to the complete 
emancipation of conscience and thought. There is, indeed, especially 
among the Independents and the Presbyterians, a few congregations 
whose trust deed simply states its object to be " the worship of God 
after the manner of Dissenters." Still, speaking generally of the 
Protestant denominations, the Unitarian Church, as will be seen in 
the following chapter, is the only religious body which has fully and 
officially broken down all the barriers to theological freedom, 

I . The requisition presented to the Lord Mayor asking him to convene a meeting 
to consider what means could be taken to aid the persecuted Jews, was signed by 
one archbishop and three bishops of the Anglican Church, by several well-known 
Nonconformist ministers, and also by Cardinal Newman, Mr. Darwin, Professor 
Tyndall, &c. 



CHAPTER IV 



ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 



Correlation between the history of Unitarianism and the progress of free inquiry — 
Origin of English Unitarianism — Socinianism — Its spread in England — First 
Unitarian Conventicles under Cromwell — ^John Biddle : his life and apostolate — 
More or less open adhesion of Milton, Locke, and Newton to Unitarianism — 
Commencement of Unitarian worship in London in 1774 — Doctrine and influence 
of Priestley — Reaction against the Sensational theology — Parallel between. 
Coleridge and Channing — Increasing diversity of theological opinions among lead- 
ing Unitarians — Opposition to the idea of a direct Revelation — Dr. Martineau and 
his influence on contemporary Unitarianism — The point of contact between advan- 
ced Unitarians and pure Theists — The Rev. Peter Dean's confession of faith — Uni- 
tarian Pantheists and evolutionists — Organization of Unitarian worship — Diverg- 
ences in its Liturgy — Text of this borrowed from all kinds of devotional literature 
— Unitarian chapels — Ritualistic Unitarianism — Nonconformist congregations 
that have reached Unitarianism — Congregations in a state of transition — The 
attempt to substitute the term Free Christian in place of Unitarian : resistance 
of the two extreme sections of Unitarianism — Present statistics of English 
Unitarianism — The British and Foreign Unitarian Association — Constant inter- 
vention of this society in favour of religious liberty and equality — How extreme 
variety of belief and organization among Unitarians excludes neither unity of 
action nor the sentiment of spiritual fellowship. 



The history of Unitarianism is closely connected in England with 
the development of free inquiry. Not that there are none to be found, 
beyond its pale, who have powerfully aided in the emancipation of 
thought, or that it is necessary in its growth more than elsewhere to 
identify the progress of reason with the varying phases of Christology. 
Still, the divinity of Jesus, whatever form the doctrine may have 
assumed, constitutes, none the less, the corner-stone of supernatural 
Christianity, the central dogma of the theology founded on a special 
revelation. 

Besides, to reduce Unitarianism to a simple revolt against the 
■dogma of the Trinity, or, indeed, against all the other dogmas which 
have arisen subsequently to the appearance of the Gospels, would be 
to take a very inadequate view of its scope and claims. From its 
origin it naturally became a centre of attraction for minds in search 
of the most advanced Christian communion of their epoch, and these, 
in turn, have re-acted upon its theology, modifying it according to the 



82 ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 

nature of the ideas at the heart of each successive generation. Thus 
the internal history of Unitarianism has been but a continued effort 
to bring Christian tradition into harmony with the requirements of 
science and philosophy. Even to-day its essential characteristic is 
that it forms a Church open to all who wish to pursue the progressive 
evolution of Christianity without let or hindrance. 

Successive attempts have been made to connect modern Unitari- 
anism with the Lollards, who were in existence as a scattered band at 
the time of the Reformation ; with the Anabaptists, whom the per- 
secutions of the sixteenth century caused to flee from the Low 
Countries into England; with the Italian and Spanish Protestants, 
who received the hospitality of Edward VI. and Elizabeth ;i and, 
lastly, with the Socinian publications which were imported from 
Holland and circulated through the country during the reigns of the 
two first Stuarts. It is certain that, as early as the time of Henry VIII., 
Arianism showed itself in England, in a sporadic state, occurring here 
and there, as evidenced by the Unitarian martyrology, published by 
Mr. Spears,^ and that, at or about the commencement of the Parlia- 
mentary Wars, there was an increase in the English translations of 
the works directed against the doctrine of the Trinity by the Socinians 
of Poland. But it was not till 1648, during the Long Parliament, 
that anti-Trinitarian conventicles were first held in London, under the 
presidency of a heretic, by the name of Welchman. The doctrine 
taught in them was to the effect that Christ had been a prophet who 
worked miracles but was not God.^ These views were soon adopted 
by John Biddle, a Master of Arts of the University of Oxford, and a 
man so well versed in the knowledge of the Bible that he could recite 
from memory almost the entire text of the New Testament.* Accord- 
ing to the Rev. J. J. Tayler, Biddle would seem to have been 
unacquainted with any Socinian works, and to have drawn the germs 
of his teaching from the study of the Bible itself. Expelled, in 1645, 
from St. Mary's pulpit in the city of Gloucester, he was subsequently 
imprisoned in Newgate as a common criminal, for the boldness with 

1. J. Bonet-Maury, Des Origines du Christianisme Unitaire chez les Anglais. 

2. R. Spears, Rise and Progress of Unitarianism in Modern Times, p. 7. 

3. Bonet-Maury, p. 232. 

4. J. J. Tayler, A Retrospect of the Religious Life of England, 2nd Edit., 
p. 221. 



ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 83 

which he defended his opinions before the ecclesiastical commission 
appointed to examine into the charge of heresy preferred against him. 
But even from his prison cell he found the means to publish two 
treatises against the Divinity of Christ and of the Holy Ghost. The 
Parliament, then under the influence of the Presbyterians, condemned 
these works to the flames, and passed a statute which, among other 
pains and penalties directed against blasphemy, made the denial of 
the Trinity a capital offence. 

Still, even then, the last word was not uttered in the struggle between 
a single modest thinker and the allied forces of Church and State. No 
sooner had the amnesty, granted by Cromwell in 1652, with the support 
of the Independents, opened the doors of Newgate to Biddle, than he 
hastened to hold private meetings every Sunday, in which, Bible in 
hand, he taught his doctrine. Hence Cromwell had him banished to 
the Scilly Isles ; but it should be added, in justice to the Protector, 
that he caused means to be secretly forwarded to him, and that at 
last he allowed him to return into England. Biddle, however, simply 
made use of this toleration to resume the work of his apostolate. 
Arrested a third time, after the Restoration, for an illegal act of 
worship, he died in prison during the year 1662, at the age of 47. 

In common with all martyrs of a just cause, Biddle left behind him 
numerous followers, among whom was his successor at Gloucester, 
the Rev. J. Cooper. Driven in turn from his office, and shut out from 
the English Church by the Act of Uniformity, Cooper organized, the 
very year after Biddle's death, a congregation at Cheltenham, to 
which he ministered for twenty years.^ In London, thanks to the 
efforts of Thomas Firman, a rich merchant, who was entirely devoted 
to Socinian ideas, although he had not broken with the Established 
Church, the Unitarians maintained a centre of action which was kept 
up without any serious persecution through the latter years of the 
reigns of the Stuarts.^ 

The general toleration which James the Second sought to establish 
in the interest of the Catholics, naturally proved beneficial to all the 
proscribed sects, the Unitarians included. Still, it was necessary that 
a long time should pass before their doctrines could be openly pro- 
claimed. Even the Revolution of 1688, which granted liberty of 

1. Spears, Op. Cit p. 21. 

2. Tayler, Op. Cit., p. 229. 



84 ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 

conscience to Nonconformists, by an Act that Mr. Lecky does not 
hesitate to speak of as the Magna Charta of religious liberty, made a 
formal exception of all who recognised the authority of the Pope, and 
those who did not accept the doctrine of the Trinity. 

So great was the strength of prejudice in this matter, that men like 
Milton, Locke, and Newton left the avowal of their Unitarian convic- 
tions to posterity.^ The manuscript of the Dodrina Christiana, in 
which Milton demonstrates that, according to the Scriptures, "the 
father of Our Saviour Jesus Christ is the only God," remained buried 
in the archives of England till 1823. Locke again refrained from 
publishing his Adversaria Theologica during his own lifetime, and 
when accused of Socinianism by Dr. Edwards, he did not hesitate to 
say that " the Apostles Creed is no more Socinian than I am." As 
to Newton, at the moment when his Exposition of Two Notable Alter- 
ations of Scripture was about to be .printed in Holland, he suddenly 
countermanded it, for fear that his authorship should be discovered, 
in spite of the veil of anonymity he had intended to throw around it. 

This, however, was the epoch in which the writings of the Deist 
Woolston against the miracles of Christ sold to the extent of 30,000 
copies. It is true that Woolston lost his position as a Fellow of the 
University of Cambridge, that he was condemned by the Court of 
Queen's Bench, and thrown into prison, as he had not wherewith to 
pay the fine. But speaking generally, it was a more dangerous thing 
to preach the Christianity of Socinianism than to spread the doctrines 
of the Deists or even of the Atheists, for this excellent reason that 
the latter were published simply as philosophical opinions, whilst 
Unitarianism aimed directly at the transformation of the current re- 
ligious beliefs. In" short, the Unitarians owed, if not official recogni- 
tion, at least the public toleration of their worship, to the indirect 
action of the development of Latitudinarian and Arminian tendencies, 
in the bosom of the English Church. 

The second chapel in which worship was ogariized with a Unitarian 
liturgy, was opened in London in 1774, in spite of the penal enact- 
ments which still threatened the promulgation of anti-trinitarian 
doctrines, and which remained on the statute book till 18 13. This 
congregation was originated by the Rev. Theophilus Lindsey, who 
had voluntarily given up his clerical position in the Established Church. 

I. J. Bonet-Maury, Op. Cit., pp. 245, &c. 



ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 85 

Then again, the end of the seventeenth century was characterized 
by a considerable extension of Unitarianism, under the leadership of 
Dr. Priestley, who wrote numerous works to prove, on the authority 
of the Bible, the exclusively human nature of Jesus. Unhappily, 
his sympathy for the French Revolution marked him out as an object 
of popular hatred, and in 1794 he was driven to seek a place of exile 
in America, without foreseeing that the time would come when a 
statue would be raised to his memory, in that very town of Birming- 
ham where the crowd had pillaged his house and scattered his 
congregation. 

There is to be observed in the ideas of Protestantism respecting 
the nature of Christ, an evolution analogous to the one I have pointed 
out in the efforts of the Puritans to reach the primitive constitution 
of the Church. On the morrow of the Reformation, the dogma of 
the Divinity of Christ began to move, in an opposite direction, along 
the lines it had followed in its formation. Calvin, indeed, as M. 
Albert Reville has shown, by insisting upon the humanity of Jesus, 
had in a certain sense paved the way for a denial of his divinity.^ 

Christ soon becomes for Servetus, what he had previously been for 
Arius, exclusively the Divine Word, a sort of Demiurgus, the first- 
born of the creation. The Socinians make of him no more than a 
man, but a man miraculously conceived and ultimately associated in 
the Divine Majesty. Even Biddle admits that a sort of subordinate 
worship may be rendered to Christ, while at the same time he denies 
his right to divine honours. In the eyes of Priestley, Jesus is simply 
the Messiah, a special messenger of God, with supernatural power ; 
and it is this interpretation which he seeks to establish by an appeal 
to the text of Scripture. Meanwhile, the day was to ultimately dawn 
in which more advanced reformers would take from the founder of the 
Christian religion the privilege of a supernatural origin, and even the 
special ofi&ce of mediator between God and man, in order to leave him 
simply the glory of his moral and religious influence. 

Priestley was profoundly convinced that the testimony of history 
established the validity of Revelation, and it is on this belief, as a 
faithful disciple of Locke and Hartley, that he bases his entire religious 
system. " If there be any truth in history," he wrote in his Essay on 
the Inspiration of Christ, " Christ wrought unquestionable miracles, 

I. Albert Reville, Histoire du Dogme de la Divinite de Jesus Christy p. 133. 



86 ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 

as a proof of his mission from God ; he preached the great doctrine 
of the Resurrection from the dead, he raised several persons from a state 
of death, and, what was more, he himself died and rose again in con- 
firmation of his doctrine. The belief of these facts I call the belief 
of Christianity." This reasoning was in perfect conformity with the 
Rationalism of the period ; but its adoption by the majority of Uni- 
tarian theologians contributed not a little to establish that reputation for 
coldness and lack of religious fervour, which was so long true of 
English Unitarianism. 

The reaction came from America, where the writings of Channing 
had played in the Unitarian Church the same part which those of 
Coleridge performed in Anglican theology. Both, in short, the one 
guided by his veneration of conscience and the other by the tenden- 
cies of German philosophy, set the religious importance of the human 
soul in a new light, and awoke in their fellows the sentiment of moral 
responsibility with the idea of free will, then more or less compromised 
by the requirements of the theology of the Sensational school. But 
while the latter applied all the resources of the new method to repair 
the breaches of orthodoxy, the former used them to establish that 
distinction between religion and theology, which could alone enable 
liberal Christianity to bear the blows of modern criticism with impu- 
nity, and which has assured the future of Unitarianism by giving it 
the character of an indefinitely progressive doctrine. ^ Both admitted 
the infallibility of the Bible, with the consequences which flow from 
this, as to the nature and the office of Jesus. But whilst the English 
theologian tried to diminish, by a subtle interpretation, the difficulties 
which this admission presented to the most advanced minds of his 
Church, the American divine made them a matter of individual 
judgment, and sought the basis of religious communion beyond the 
pale of all creeds. From Channing, indeed, dates that increasing 
diversity of theological convictions in the Unitarian body which might 
scandalize those in love with doctrinal uniformity, but which none the 
less forms the peculiar characteristic and the strength of the Unitarian 
Church of to-day. 

As early as the first third of the nineteenth century, in face of the 
school which adhered to the theology of Priestley, and which persisted 
in seeing in the miraculous elements of the Bible the keystone to, the 

I. James Martineau, The T/i7'ee Stages of Unitarian Theology. London, 1882. 



ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 87 

whole Christian edifice, there gradually sprang up a generation of 
Unitarians who preferred seeking the source of the religious sentiment, 
and even the claims of Christianity itself, in the m.oral commands of 
conscience and in the native aspirations of the soul. Regarding the 
Bible as a special depository of religious truth, and 'Jesus as the chosen 
of God for the spiritual salvation of humanity, this new school soon 
began to attach but a secondary importance to the external proofs of 
Revelation ; and, consequently, it was able to sacrifice the letter of the 
Biblical narrative, without any unreasonable opposition, when this 
began to receive a formal rejection, either on the part of science or 
historical criticism. Up to this time its adherents had declined to 
deny, in general and a priori^ the occurrence of miracles. But in 
"proportion as the double critical and scientific current of modern ideas 
became distinct, views were seen to develop themselves, 'among the 
principal interpreters of Unitarianism, which excluded the possibility 
of a Divine intervention in violation of the laws of nature, and sub- 
jected Christianity itself to the general laws of religious evolution. 

To-day, the Priestley school has almost disappeared. The moderate 
position which Dr. Martineau occupied thirty years ago,i has become 
the extreme right of the Unitarian Church; he himself, although 
maintaining the unique character of the Christian Revelation, and the 
absolute superiority of its Founder, has long since adopted the 
opinion that the Divine Action must be exclusively sought in the 
regular course of natural law, the progressive development of history 
and the native aspirations of the soul. 2 For the left wing of Unitari- 
anism, Jesus is only a product of his age and country, greatly superior 
to his contemporaries by the elevation of his sentiments, and admirably 
inspired by a love of humanity, but, at the same time, subject to all 
the limitations of our nature and a member, in short, of the same 
family to which all the celebrated reformers of history belong. 

This point of view is absolutely identical with that of the "Theists" 
who, long isolated in religious society, have thus found themselves 
occupying common ground with .the advanced lines of Unitarianism. 
Professor F. W. Newman, for instance, who, for more than thirty 

1. Ch. de Remusat, Les Controverses religieuses en Angleterre in the Revue des 
Deux Mondes of ist of January, 1859. 

2, James Martineau, Loss and Gam in Recent Theology (London, 1881), and 
The Three Stages of Unitarian Theology. 



00 ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 

years was in opposition to every sect of Christianity, the Unitarians 
induded, owing to his persistent denial df the revealed character of 
the Bible and the necessity of a Mediator, naturally found a place 
marked out for him in the ranks of Unitarianism, as soon as that 
communion no longer refused to identify itself with confessions of 
faith similar to the following, which the Rev. Peter Dean formulated 
before the Unitarian congregation, at Clerkenwell, in 1875 • — "Faith 
in an infinitely perfect God is all our Theology. The Universe is 
our Divine Revelation. The Manifestations of Nature and the 
Devotional Literature of all Times and Peoples, are our Bible. . . 
The goodness incarnated in humanity is our Christ. Every guide 
and helper is our Saviour. Increasing personal hoHness is our salva- 
tion. The normal wonders of Nature are our Miracles. . . Love to 
God and love to man — piety and morality — are our only sacraments."^ 

What Freethinker, however feeble his beUef in God and his faith 
in progress, could refuse to sign such a declaration of principles as 
this, if he found himself in consequence placed in a better position 
to aid in the reconciliation of the religious sentiment with reason ? 
There is no room for surprise that it was by a sermon delivered in the 
Clerkenwell Chapel, in 1875, ^^^^ Professor Newman explained the 
reasons for his entrance into the Unitarian body. He was received, 
as a matter of course, with open arms and, since 1878, his name has 
figured in the list of the Vice-Presidents of the British and Foreign 
Unitarian Association. 

Still more advanced, there exists a group of young ministers of 
ability who profess a sort of idealistic Pantheism, borrowed either 
from the ideas of Strauss or from the writings of Herbert Spencer. 
Their attitude towards the Christian tradition is almost identical with 
that of the Theists. But they prefer to simply see in God a 
mysterious and indefinable Power, who is working for the realization 
of order and justice in the world. Some of them go so far as to 
state that the object of religion, as they conceive of it, is the realiza- 
tion of the human ideal, and that if is this ideal they render divine in 
order to bow before it in adoration. Thus the gamut of the philo- 
sophical opinions represented in Unitarian theology is complete, 

I. Clerkenwell Unitarian Church. The Minister's Religious Principles, an 
appendix to a Sermon by Professor F. W. Newman, Sin Against Qpd. London : 
Trubner, 1875. 



ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 89 

extending, as it does, from a semi-orthodox Socinianism to the con- 
fines of the religion of humanity according to the Gospel of Comte. 

It may be asked whether the progress of this evolution has not 
developed signs of declining fervour or of lassitude, which began to 
reveal themselves in the religious attitude of Unitarianism a third of 
a century ago : that is to say, at the time when the mass of Unitarians 
still shared the belief in the infallibility of the Bible and the miracu- 
lous power of Christ. In reply to this question, I shall quote a passage 
from a sermon, delivered on the 14th of June, 1883, by the Rev. R. 
A. Armstrong, before the members of the Western Christian Union.i 
After having admitted that the progress of Biblical criticism in England 
during the last twenty-five years had stripped Christianity of all its old 
supernatural claims, he remarked that, at first sight, this critical work 
could not fail to seem calculated to destroy the importance still 
accorded by Unitarians to the Biblical narrative and to the person of 
Christ. Still, he continued, " The result has wholly falsified all such 
gloomy anticipations. Not destruction, but reconstruction, has been 
the upshot of all this ferment. The Bible had ceased to interest. 
There was not the ring of truth in the way it was interpreted. We 
have faced the facts now. We have seen the true upgrowth of the 
marvellous literature which we did not understand before. . . . 
And so the Bible has come to be the most interesting of all histories, 
and we feel the movement of God through it all ; and understand how, 
through error and folly and sin, He trains the nations up in the great 
school of our common humanity. We no longer call the Bible a 
supernatural Revelation, or give it any official or miraculously authori- 
tative position > but we like it, some- of us love it ; we do not any longer 
find it dull, and we find that there is a well of pure waters in it, 
refreshing us to eternal life. 

"And the Christ, he had lost touch of us; and then came the 
critics, and we thought he was going to dissolve into air, and be no 
more to us than the fancy- wrought figure of a myth. How is it now ? 
Why, it is thus : — It is true we have dropped many an old phrase as 
too artificial and technical for our use now. It is true we no way put 
Christ between ourselves and the Father whom he preached : nothing, 



I. R. A. Armstrong, Hopes and Dangers of English Unitarianism^ a Sermon 
reproduced in the Inquirer of the 30th of June, 1883. 



90 ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 

it seems to us, save sin, would have grieved him more. There are 
numbers of us now who do not believe that he had any other entrance 
into the world than other sons of honourable and loving parents ; who 
do not believe that Herod in Palestine or the Magi of the East troubled 
themselves one whit about that baby boy ; who do not believe one 
ripple on the Sea of Galilee was ever smoothed by magic word of his, 
or that any waters bore him as a ghost over their pathless face ; who 
do not believe that the poor lacerated body, once dead, thrilled ever 
again with the currents of fleshly life ; who do not believe that his 
spirit found its way to the bosom of God otherwise than those of 
others who have loved and served and perished bravely at their post. 
No ; he is human to us altogether ; and we see how it was that all 
those legends gathered to his fame out of the love and wonder of the 
men who followed in his steps. But for that very reason this Jesus 
has become to us real, vivid, bright, strong, beautiful. ■ He is so utterly 
a brother of our own. We can see the happy boyish home, the young 
man wistful at the stern, strange, awakening word that came borne on 
the air from Jordan, the man in all the thick and press of ministry 
gasping ever and anon for a breath of lonely prayer on the mountain- 
side, the joy in the help and comfort he found he could give poor 
men and women, the sorrow at the perversity of understanding mani- 
fested by so many, the marvellous union of strength and tenderness, 
of indomitable purpose and winning courtesy, of passionate yearning 
and untroubled calm ; and then by-and-by the closing in of the dark- 
ness above and around, and the lonely, heroic, consecrated death. 
And we can take this man for our type and model of the loveliest and 
noblest humanity has ever been ; and we can love him with all our 
heart and soul. 

" And if it had not been for the criticism, the microscopic exami- 
nation of the life-nature, the ruthless scientific analysis, which seemed 
so destructive and so deadly, we should have been severed more and 
more from Christ ; the historical and philosophical difficulties unsolved 
would have been driven as a solid wedge in between him and us ; we 
should have had no Christ ; and ere this, Christianity might have been 
to us a vain and foolish name."^ 

I. This is substantially the position taken up recently by M. Renan, in his re- 
markable lecture delivered before the Societe des Etudes juives (\. la Revue Polite' 
que et Litteraire of the 2nd of June, 1883). 



ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 91 

It will be readily understood that, under these circumstances, the 
Unitarians, like the members of the Broad Church party and the 
liberal Protestants of Ihe Continent, have taken a considerable share 
in promoting the progress of Biblical criticism. This is exceptionally 
true of the Rev. P. H. Wicksteed, who has translated into English the 
principal works of the so-called school of modern Protestantism, which 
is represented with so much eclat by Professor Kuenen and his col- 
leagues of the University of Leyden. 

The forms of worship among Unitarians present the same diversity 
as their theological opinions. Each congregation determines its own 
mode of worship as it thinks best, or according to the preferences of 
its minister. The Unitarian Almanack for 1883 mentions the exist- 
ence of twenty-five different liturgies in use in the denomination, 
without taking into account the innovations of separate congregations. 
Several of these devotional compilations speak the language of pure 
Theism ; others continue to employ the old supernatural phraseology. 
The one most largely used is the Book of Common Prayer for Chris- 
tian Worships compiled by Dr. Martineau. It consists of ten forms 
of worship or " services " — it is commonly spoken of as the " Ten 
Services " — with special forms for Baptism, Confirmation, and Ordi- 
nation, as well as prayers for the Queen, the Royal Family, the Church, 
Parliament, &c. These latter are but seldom used in the Unitarian 
body; but their retention in this manual of devotion is explicable 
from the principle on which it was drawn up — the author having 
simply confined himself to excluding from the Anglican liturgy all 
that possessed a Trinitarian or dogmatic significance — and perhaps 
also from the further idea that, in this form, it might be acceptable 
to orthodox congregations in a state of transition. 

The " Ten Services " are at present used in more than two hundred 
Unitarian congregations whose ministers do not, however, hesitate to 
modify them to suit their own requirements. Besides, in a recent 
edition, the author or compiler — who has always kept abreast of his age 
and who, in this respect, admirably personifies the Unitarian evolution 
of modern times — has cut out all the passages which relate to what he 
characterises as the Messianic Mythology, that is to say the direct invo- 
cation of Christ as Messiah and Mediator. He explains, in the preface, 
that these ideas are not in harmony with the increasing tendency of 
our age, which leaves the soul more and more face to face with God. 



92 ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 

In many Unitarian Churches, either because an antipathy has been 
maintained to formularies, from the Presbyterian origin of the congre- 
gation, or because the minister prefers having recourse to extempor- 
aneous utterance, there is no form whatever, except the order and 
distribution of the service. This service, moreover, consists in all 
cases of an alternation of hymns, prayers and readings, with a sermon 
towards the close. Some of the ministers of an advanced type, such 
as the Revs. Frank Walters of Glasgow, and J. Taylor of Preston, no 
longer select their reading lessons exclusively from the Old and New 
Testament, but also from what the Rev, Peter Dean calls the sacred 
literature of all ages and peoples. In some cases the worshippers join 
in the singing of the hymns ; at other times they allow them to be 
wholly sung by the choir, which, though an advantage from a musical 
point of view, robs the service of much of its fervour. There are 
some ministers who make use of a gown ; others officiate in a frock 
coat with or without a white tie. The Communion Service is still 
administered in the majority of the congregations, not, as will be 
supposed, with a sacramental significance, but simply as a fraternal 
symbol in commemoration of Jesus. Some congregations, however, 
have formally suppressed it, or at least allowed it to fall into disuse. 

In some few instances^ discussion is invited at the close of the 
service, the minister giving over the subject of his sermon to the 
criticism of anyone who wishes to speak upon it. The effect con- 
troversies of this sort must have upon the traditions and even upon 
the principles of Christianity, will be readily conceived ; but there is 
nothing in them which is not conformable to the eminently theological 
temperament of English society.^ 

Some of the buildings used for worship are so absolutely destitute 
of everything possessed of religious significance, that anyone might 
readily suppose himself in a lecture or concert hall, which, indeed, is 
frequently the case, Protestants having no prejudices in this matter. 
Such edifices, in short, with their bare walls and no fittings but a gallery 
for the choir, with seats for the worshippers and a pulpit for the 
minister, form what may be called the traditional type of Noncon- 
formist chapels. There are congregations, however, on the other 

I. This is true merely of certain new congregations formed, some time since, 
under exceptional circumstances ; the practice is falling into disuse, if it has not 
entirely ceased. — Translator. 



ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 93 

hand, who worship in churches which bear no trace of Puritan sim- 
plicity, either in their internal fittings or in their architecture. So far 
as London is concerned, I may mention Unity Church, in the Islington 
district, and the Free Christian Church in Clarence Road, Kentish 
Town, in illustration of this statement. Both are built in the Gothic 
style, and possess a happy arrangement of stained windows, as well as 
considerable refinement of internal decoration. More fortunate than 
their High Church brethren, the Unitarians can indulge in aesthetic 
effect as much as they please, without being liable to the reproach 
that they are on the road to Canossa in consequence of their ritualism. 

This extreme independence of the individual churches, has facili- 
tated the entrance into the Unitarian body of various congregations 
which originally belonged to other denominations — Baptists, Presby- 
terians, Independents — and which, either because they have gradually 
rejected their former confessions of faith, or because they never 
possessed any, have thus coalesced with the descendants of the old 
Socinians, in the acceptance of a Christianity stripped of all dogmatic 
elements. According to the Rev. R. Spears, half the existing Uni- 
tarian churches are the historic representatives of old Presbyterian con- 
gregations which have passed through Arminianism during their 
transition. With the great majority of them, even where they have 
retained their former name, as for instance in the term " Unitarian 
Baptists," the evolution has been long since completed ; with a few 
others it is to be actually seen in progress. As examples of this I may 
mention the congregation worshipping at the Church of the Saviour, 
Birmingham, which was originally formed by Mr. George Dawson, 
on broadly evangelical lines, and is to-day ministered to by the Rev. 
G. St. Clair ; and also the congregation of Bedford Chapel, London, 
the minister of which is the Rev. Stopford Brooke, formerly one of 
the most distinguished members of the Broad Church party. ^ In both 

I. Possessed of distinguished abilities, great learning, and a sympathetic mode of 
address, Mr. Stopford Brooke has carried with him the greater part of his old con- 
gregation, and what is very rare in the annals of secessions from the Establishment, 
he has been able to retain the building he used when in Anglican orders — the im- 
portant Bedford Chapel, which is the private property of the Duke of that name. 
Mr. Brooke has, also, partly adhered to the form of the Anglican Service, and as 
he figured, long previously to the change, among the most heterodox preachers of 
the Broad Church party, there would scarcely be anything to mark the transition, 
were it not for that increase of boldness and even of power, which always results 
from the absence of compromise. 



94 ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 

these instances the ministers hold views which assimilate them to 
moderate Unitarians, and their congregations ai'e unquestionably com- 
posed of liberal Christian elements. Still they have not yet adopted 
the Unitarian name ; nor have they taken their place in the denomi- 
nation.^ 

A somewhat curious illustration of this once came under my own 
experience at the Unitarian Church in Clarence Road, Kentish Town. 
The preacher having taken as his text a passage from the writings of 
St. Paul relative to the dissensions of the early Christians, devoted 
his sermon to a defence of the attitude adopted by Unitarians, in 
refusing to consider belief in the miracles of the Bible and the divinity- 
of Christ as essential elements of the Christian religion. To my sur- 
prise I learnt afterwards that the preacher was not a Unitarian, but a 
minister _of the Independent Church. My informant added that the 
first time the minister in question exchanged pulpits with one of his 
Unitarian brethren — an act which is very common in the Noncon- 
formist denominations — he astonished his hearers by the boldness of 
his language, whilst his friend, on the other hand, surprised the 
Independents by the cautious tone of his tlieological utterances. The 
circumstance is explicable from the fact that the Unitarian considered 
it wise to select the most orthodox of his sermons for the occasion, 
and the Independent the most liberal. But the possibility of such an 
occurrence shows clearly enough the difficulty there is in circum- 
scribing the sphere of liberal Protestantism, as well as in drawing a 
clear line of demarcation between the most closely related elements 
of the different Churches which extend, in England, from Semi- 
Catholic Ritualism to the extreme limits of religious Rationalism. 

With a view to bring into closer union the various Churches which 
have successively rejected their former creeds, a section of the Uni- 
tarian body, in 1872, proposed the abandonment of the old descriptive 
name ** Unitarian," and the substitution of the more comprehensive 
term " Free Christian " in place of it. Under this latter designation, 
therefore, they founded a religious association with a view to embrace 
" all who deem men responsible, not for the attainment of Divine truth, 

I. Mr. Brooke's connection with Unitarianism has become much closer of iate, 
as shown by his having allowed his name to appear in the Unitarian Almanack^ and 
above all by his having preached the annual sermons for the British and Foreign 
Unitarian Association in 1884. — Translator. 



ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 95 

but only for the serious search of it, and who rely for the religious im- 
provement of human life on filial piety and brotherly charity, with or 
without more particular agreement in matters of doctrinal theology." 

A year later the Free Christians duly celebrated their first anniver- 
sary in the fine Masonic Hall, which is situate in Great Queen Street. 
Among the ministers present on that occasion were, side by side with 
Dr. Martineau and the well-known French pastor, Athanase Coquerel, 
an Independent minister, the Rev. W. Miall, and a member of the 
Anglican clergy, the Rev. C. Kegan Paul, who is now at the head of 
a great publishing firm in London. The '' Free Christians " could 
hardly have taken a wiser course in order to emphasise their claim to 
comprehend all the sections of Christianity in a universal Church, 
founded no longer on what Channing calls " a degrading conformity 
to dogma," but on that community of sentiment which admits of 
independent thought within the bonds of religious association. They 
did not succeed, however, in bringing over to their views more than a 
somewhat restricted portion of the Unitarian congregations. The 
fact is they ran counter to the feelings of the conservative section who 
cling to their historic name, and also to the views of the more ad- 
vanced minds who, taking the word Unitarian as the synonym of 
Monotheist, regard it as more comprehensive than the appellation 
" Free Christian," which cannot be extended beyond the bounds of 
Christianity. 

The various Unitarian, Presbyterian, General Baptist and Free 
Christian congregations, which constitute the Unitarian denomination 
in Great Britain, are 374 in number, with 382 ministers, according to 
the Unitarian Pocket Almanack for 1883. The denomination possesses 
six monthly periodicals, a publication of some importance which 
appears every three months, the Modern Review^ a quarterly magazine 
devoted to Sunday school work : Teachers Notes^ and finally three 
weekly journals : the Inquirer, which treats of social and political as 
well as religious questions, and in a like liberal manner ; the Christian 
Life, the representative of the conservative tendencies of the body ; 
and the Unitarian Herald, which occupies a moderate position 
between the other two.^ 

I. The Modern Review has since been discontinued, but a new publication of 
the kind, though of more general scope, is contemplated. Teacher's Notes, too, 
has given place to a successor, The Sujiday School Helper. — Translator. 



96 ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 

As already intimated the Unitarian Churches are not bound together 
by any administrative or doctrinal authority. Still there has grown 
up among them a large number of special associations which aim at 
the spread of liberal principles in religion, and the promotion of 
educational and philanthropic efforts. The principal of these societies 
is the British and Foreign Unitarian Association which, founded in 
1825 by the fusion of several pre-existing societies, concentrates, to- 
day, all the active forces of Unitarianism. Its programme comprises 
the following objects : The spread of the principles of Unitarianism 
at home and abroad ; the maintenance of its worship ; the diffusion 
of critical, theological and literary knowledge bearing on its doctrines ; 
and the protection of the civil rights and interests of its adherents. 
The sum which the Association devotes to these different objects 
varies considerably, amounting in some cases to nearly £4,600 per 
annum. Constituting as it does the most authoritative permanent 
organization of Unitarianism, its voice is frequently raised in the 
name of the entire body, not only when the interests of the denomina- 
tion are at stake, but also in relation to all those public questions 
which appear to its members to concern, in any way, the general in- 
terests of liberal Protestantism. Hence it rarely holds its annual 
meeting without having some petition to Parliament submitted for 
consideration by its committee. 

It was not till 1844, for instance, that it succeeded in getting the 
State to recognize the rights of Unitarians in the ownership of their 
chapels. But in illustration of what has been just stated and in oppo- 
sition to what takes place in the majority of Churches — and, unhappily, 
beyond the pale of Churches too — the Unitarians, I may add, have 
not been content with demanding justice for themselves. The Asso- 
ciation, indeed, has been seen to successively interpose, in the most 
active manner, on behalf of the various movements organized for the 
emancipation of the Roman Catholics, the admission of Jews to 
Parliament, the institution of civil marriage, the acquisition of religious 
equality in the parish church-yards, and the promotion of secular 
education in the public schools.^ As early as 1880, it petitioned 
Parliament for such a modification of the Oath as would no longer 
make the exercise of legislative functions dependent upon religious 

I. See A summary of the History of the British and Foreign Unitarian Associa- 
tion, from its formation, in its 50th Annual Report. London, 1875. 



ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 97 

or anti-religious opinions ; and at the Annual Meeting of 1882, revert- 
ing to the question in more precise terms after the Bradlaugh incidents 
in the House, it passed the following resolution : — '' That this meeting 
desires to place on record its affirmation of the principle that the pro- 
fession of Atheism should not deprive any citizen of his civil rights', 
including that of representing his fellow-citizens in Parliament if duly 
elected; and directs the Executive Committee to take every fitting 
opportunity of petitioning both Houses of Legislature in this sense." 
Again, at the meetings of 1883, it adopted resolutions condemnatory 
of all trials for blasphemy, and for the release of the men just previ- 
ously sentenced to long terms of imprisonment in connection with 
the J^ree^/imkeriprosecution. 

In addition to their Annual Meetings held in London, at Whitsuntide, 
and their autumnal meetings in the provinces, the Unitarians hold, 
from time to time, General Conferences, which are attended by ministers 
and delegates, as well as by many of the members of the various con- 
gregations. The last of these Conferences, which took "place at Liver- 
pool in April, 1882, was a brilliant success, and is regarded as having 
re-kindled the zeal of the denomination, which had somewhat declined 
during the previous years. ^ Seven hundred delegates, and nearly two 

I. An equally successful Conference has been held in Birmingham this year — 
1885. It may be remarked, however, that it was not exclusively Unitarian, and 
that Mr, J? Allanson Picton, M.A., M.P. — formerly a Congregational minister — 
who disavows Unitarianism, read a paper there on : — " The Influence upon Religion 
of the Modern Development of the Critical and Rational Spirit." This paper 
describes in a forcible and suggestive manner the condition of religious thought in 
many of the so-called orthodox Churches, and denotes in this way, at least 
indirectly, the great difficulty which Unitarianism has to encounter, as a special 
system of faith and worship. It has in short so full and direct a bearing on the ques- 
tion discussed in these pages, that the reader will be interested in the following 
extract from it, lengthy as it is : — 

"Thirty years ago there was a strong line of demarcation between secular and 
religious periodical literature. The one for the most part carefully eschewed 
theology, or only took cognisance of it when applause could be won by vindicating 
the worldly wisdom of the Anglican via media. As to religious magazines and 
newspapers, the reputation they most coveted was that of defenders of the faith. 
The struggles of the Westminster Review and other humbler ventures of the same 
kind only go to confirm these remarks. But now how different is the state of 
things ! Not only do the three chief monthlies find it practically safe and even 
profitable to dabble in heresy, but the most widely-circulated religious newspaper 
of the day is distinguished by the frankness with which it treats every question 
affecting the relation of theological dogma to scientific discovery or historic research. 
As to the popular magazines, one case speaks volumes, and the mere mention of it 

H 



98 ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 

thousand other friends of the movement responded to the appeal of 
the organizers. Hence the tone of the subsequent Annual Meetings 
has been one of great confidence in the future. It might be affirmed, 
indeed, that Unitarianism is on the eve of a new development ; for 
some time past it has been attempting to reach the masses by the 
organization of popular services, the success of which has exceeded 
all expectation.2 

will save the accumulation of instances. In the current number of the Contempor- 
ary Reviezu, a magazine specially guaranteed virginibus puerisque by the well known 
character both of editor and proprietors, we find the most distinguished satirist of 
religious schism quietly appealing to the good sense of his readers to abandon the 
miracles of the Incarnation and the Resurrection, together with the prospect of a 
Day of Judgment, on the ground that they are hindrances rather than helps to 
religion. Now this and similar magazines are not addressed specially to readers of 
a negative and faithless temper. On the contrary, the vast majority of their readers 
are not only regular attendants on public worship, but more or less devout and 
active members of Churches. Unless the critical and rational spirit had spread very 
considerably amongst them, we may be sure ttiat the appearance of articles like 
' A Comment on Christmas ' in their favourite magazine would not be as welcome 
to them as it evidently is. I think, therefore, I need say no more in illustration of 
what I mean by the 'modern development of a critical and rational spirit.' 

" It is natural that even the most candid and courageous advocates of devoutness 
and faith should feel a little anxiety in view of this remarkable m^ovement in opinion. 
And to the question, What is likely to be its influence on religion ? no satisfactory 
answer can be given which does not allow for a much farther advance and wider 
spread of the same spirit. We cannot, with any sense of permanence, content our- 
selves with showing the harmlessness of the very moderate Rationalisih prevalent 
just now. The time at my disposal does upt allow me to give reasons, and I must 
limit myself to the observation that the same influences which have led to a very 
general abandonment of the six days of creation, and of the Legend of Eden, are 
quite capable of eliminating all miracle whatever, and all supernatural revelation 
from popular belief. Whether that will universally happen or not, is not now the 
question. It is pretty certain to occur very widely, and we are asking ourselves 
what will be the influence on religion. Suppose a whole generation regarding 
Christianity as a purely natural incident in human evolution, will they on that 
account be wholly without saving faith ? It may be said that it is impossible to 
judge until the time comes. But I venture to think that we are not wholly without 
the means of forming an opinion now. 

** It is notorious that there are in almost all Churches at the present day a con- 
siderable number of members who have abandoned every shred of belief in miracle 
or supernatural revelation in the ordinary sense, but who still worship with their old 
associates, and do not feel it necessary even to turn Unitarian. Observe, I am not 
speaking of ministers or clergymen, but only of ordinary attendants on religious 
worship. Unitarians always expect to get hold of these people. They even think 
they have a natural right to them, and are disposed to make charges of disin- 
genuousness or cowardice because their expectations are not fulfilled. But there is 
no reason for such complaints. The change that has come over these people is not 
a conversion to Unitarianism, but the development of a spiritual agnosticism to 



ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 99 

As we have seen, variety of belief, and even diversity of organization, 
does not exclude from among Unitarians either the feeling of denomi- 
nation, unity, or the sentiment of a true spiritual communion. It is 
this which the Rev. R. R. Sufifield, who has been the minister at the 
Unitarian Church, at Reading, in Berkshire, for several years past, and 
was formerly a Roman Catholic priest, shows in the following terms, 
in a sermon preached in 1881, with the title, Why I beca?ne a Unita- 
rian : — " Amongst them there were, I perceived, various opinions as 

which all creed-framed theologies are equally meaningless, and all real worship 
equally inspiring. I knew very well one of these people, who so far from being 
attracted to Unitarianism by his critical and rational development, was only drawn 
away from his own sect by a preference for Methodist fervour. The reason is very 
plain. These spiritual agnostics have so entirely abandoned all hope of enlighten- 
ment about the ultimate ontological mysteries of the Universe that they feel a 
resentment against preachers who bother them with an abandoned puzzle. But, on 
the other hand, there are none more grateful for a word that touches the heart with 
a human sympathy, or deepens reverence, or humbles pride, or inspires with the 
temper of Christ. 

" If I may speak from a tolerably intimate knowledge of some typical cases of 
the kind, the people who have passed through this experience are singularly uncon- 
scious of any moral or spiritual change at all commensurate with the intellectual 
difference between their earlier and their later beliefs. In fact, even the intellectual 
difference does not appear to themselves so great as it does to unsympathising critics. 
But of that I may say a word presently. At any rate, their religious affections are 
very much what they were when first awakened in early years. If they then betook 
themselves to St. Thomas a Kempis they find his pages no less refreshing now. 
If they then found some of Wesley's hymns fit music for the Holy of Holies within 
them, it is only a few needlessly coarse notes that strike any discord now. If their 
hearts then glowed at the fervent though ungrammatical aspirations of an unlettered 
brother after a better life, they do not find the least decay of such susceptibility now. 
And if they are compelled, to keep themselves at k distance, it is only out of respect 
for the painful suspicions entertained by the unlettered brother concerning them. 
Of course they have come to regard faith as a spiritual affection of loyalty to the 
best ideal known, and not in the least degree as a belief of facts or assertions. But 
they maintain that this was the essence of faith even in the teaching of St. Paul, 
though they allow that in his epistles intellectual processes and moral affections are 
not always kept distinct. But holding to the moral significance of faith as the only 
effective part of its confused connotation in old times, they find that in regard to 
the essentials of religion. Faith, Hope, and Charity, they are very much where they 
were in the days of their evangelical fervour. 

. "I am well aware of all the objections that may be made, first against the 
soundness of the position occupied by this admittedly exceptional class, and next 
against the probability of any wide extension of their experience in coming gener- 
ations. As far as the narrow limits imposed on me will allow, I will try to sum up 
in a few concluding words the considerations which appear to me to outweigh those 
objections. These people say that their practical and regulative ideas of God, 
Christ, and the Bible are proved in their experience to be quite sufficient for the 
needs of life. Now if this is so, solvitur ambulando, and such experience, when 



100 ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 

to the person and office of Christ, as to the supernatural or natural 
position of Christ, of Christianity, of the Bible ; but I found them for 
the most part loyally and gratefully pursuing the central truth of their 
origin and co-operation, as worshippers of God, free to follow their 
reason, their consciences, and the holy law of Cosmic growth. 

" Lastly, though I saw many Unitarians accorded to the Bible and 
to Christ a position I deemed exaggerated and erroneous, yet even 
with them I perceived an essential bond of unity and agreement, 
inasmuch as they always claimed for conscience and reason the mental 
and moral supremacy over life and action. So I was not forced to 

real, generally proves to be catching. If is not a sufficient objection to show that 
the practical and regulative ideas left us do not solve the mysteries of human destiny. 
Of course they do not. But these spiritual agnostics say that such a solution of 
mysteries is no part of the work of religion. It is for philosophy to do that — if it 
can. Thebusiness of religion is not to give intellectual light, but moral strength 
and purity ; not to enable us to understand the working of the universe, but to make 
us consciously, by unreserved loyalty of soul, contented cogs in the infinite machine. 
Spiritual agnostics, therefore, do not care in the least for the taunt that they explain 
nothing. They carry much farther than the old evangelicals their protest against the 
pride of intellect. In fact, what they chiefly find fault with in these old evangelicals 
is the spurious rationalism which pretends to declare *the whole counsel of God.' 

" What, then, it may be asked, are those practical and regulative ideas of God, 
and Christ, and the Bible, that are left to us ? The author of ' Natural Religion ' 
•has well said that no man can be without a theology, though he may not call it by 
that name. We are so constituted that temporary existence is unthinkable without 
eternal being as a background ; for we cannot imagine anything arising out of 
nothing. Whether, we choose to call the everlasting by the name of God or not, 
we cannot think it away. And if we identify it with the universe, there remains 
that transcendent attribute of unity to which science bears increasing testimony, 
and which, when we try to realise it, sways the soul with an overwhelming awe. 
Many sufficient reasons have been given why we should give up this God or that ; 
and with reverence be it spoken, the God of the earliest Christian congregations is 
not in all points the God of Christian congregations now. But no reason of any 
avail has ever been given why we should sever ourselves from the innermost life of 
humanity by wholly surrendering a name which amidst ten thousand variations 
always keeps a central significance of eternal being, authority and power. As 
Mr, Herbert Spencer has shown, the evolution of the idea of God exhibits a con- 
tinuity from the beginning to the end in its retention of an indestructible instinct of 
kinship between the bottomless mystery within and the measureless mystery without. 
Aratus conceived of God in one way, and St. Paul in another, and our ideas are 
necessarily different from both ; but there is a meaning for us all in the words that 
' we are His offspring. ' Before we were, He is. Of Him we are, as are all created 
things. He is that unity of power which co-ordinates innumerable forces to make 
the laws of nature and of life. The thought of Him stimulates the reverence which 
makes loyalty to universal law a holy obedience and a joy. Whatever has been 
said of God and His ways that science or historic criticism can disprove, we readily 
surrender. To do otherwise would be disloyalty to Him. We cannot picture Him 



ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 101 

suffer the spiritual disadvantages of religious isolation, for I could 
honestly and happily find amongst Unitarian worshippers a religious 
home, and the benefits of religious sympathy, and the consolations of 
collective religious worship. And during eleven years I have never 
regretted my choice. Religious fellowship is always a blessing to 
oneself, but it is moreover a benefit to others, to be enabled to invite 
their attention to communities of worshippers wherein the most 

as He is. But we picture Him as we can ; for the visible universe is the skirt of 
His garment, and the experience of mankind is His partial revelation, the growing 
interpretation of the for-ever unknowable. And His worship draws us out of self 
into the better life of sympathy and loyalty. 

"I have spoken of the experience of mankind as His partial revelation. I cannot 
pursue the subject, but can only speak of the one conspicuous illustration which makes 
us Christians, How shall a man best live in the thought of God ? Christ is the answer. 
But it is said the picture of Christ is unhistorical. How far that is the case I cannot 
argue now. We have very good ground for believing that the loveliest features are 
historical enough for all practical purposes. But however that may be, the picture 
is there. It is the reflection of a life where self is dissolved in two strong, holy 
passions, loyalty to God and love to man. And that life expresses itself in words 
and deeds that are an immortal inspiration, I am told that many of the deeds are 
evidently distorted by imagination, for they are miracles, and miracles never 
occurred. Be it so, I am rather glad of it ; for it removes one difficulty in the 
way of imitation. But the thought will arise that this very distortion suggests the 
transcendent mastery of a spirit whose deeds straightway transformed themselves 
into miracles in the memory of sQrvivors. At any rate, the luminous simplicity, the 
strange, searching power of the words recorded, the far-reaching ideal they suggest, 
and the large-hearted love manifested in the deeds described, together form a 
picture which represents a very incarnation of that vague dream of a kinship or 
unity between God and man, which, according to Mr, Herbert Spencer, has 
haunted all human thought. This is a vision which the critical and rational spirit 
can as little mar as the theory of optics can degrade a rainbow," 

This "spiritual agnosticism," of which Mr, Picton speaks, not only hinders the 
extension of the Unitarian Church from without ; it tends, moreover, to check its 
development from within. For no sooner do its ministers and members get to feel 
that dogma is infinitely subordinate to worship, than they lose that denominational 
zeal which characterised their fathers. Besides, the growth of spiritual insight, the 
conviction that spiritual life clothes itself with a garment of belief adapted to the 
culture of the individual is another hindrance to the extension of the Unitarian 
Church, as a separate organization, to say nothing of the indifference that so often 
creeps in with the change or rationalistic growth of a creed. — Translator. 

2. This is specially true of Leicester, where immense congregations have been 
drawn together in the Floral Hall, by the Rev, J, P. Hopps. But it should be 
added that these particular services are not continued throughout the year, and that 
no attempt has been made to crystallize the people who attend them into a perma- 
nent congregation, or to do more, indeed, than awaken religious reverence and a 
sense of human brotherhood, as far as possible, apart from any dogmatic creed. — 
Translator. 



102 ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 

philosophic and independent thinker can co-operate without an 
hypocrisy and without an equivocation — to chapels wherein children 
are taught moral and sacred lessons, but always in harmony with the 
highest attained truth— to chapels wherein the various epochs of life 
and of its close, are sanctified by acts of devotion not founded on 
the mythological or interwoven with the superstitious." 



CHAPTER V. 



RATIONALISTIC CONGREGATIONS BEYOND THE PALE 
OF CHRISTIANITY. 



The Theistic Church at Langham Hall — The Rev. C. Voysey and his expulsion 
from the Established Church — His use of an Anglican liturgy stripped entirely of 
its Christian character — His principles and aims — History of his congregation — 
Condition and future prospects of the movement — The society of Independent 
Religious Reformers — The "Free Church" in Nevi^man Street — Rules of the 
Society — Causes of its failure — The Humanitarians — Their services at Claremont 
Hall — The "Fifteen points of the religion of God" — The philosophy of Peter 
Leroux in its bearing on worship — " Humanitarianism" in Castle Street — Growth 
of a new faith — Reformed Judaism — Origin of this movement tending to strip 
Judaism of its ceremonial, hygienic and national prescriptions — Gradual rejection 
of the belief in direct Revelation — Final barriers between the Reformed Jews and 
the Theists of Christian origin — Idealistic Agnosticism — The South Place religious 
society — Mr. Moncure D. Conway, the successor of W. J. Fox — Anti-dogmatic 
basis of the organization over which he presides — Religious worship at South 
Place chapel — Mr. Conway's opinion of the nature of religion and the identity of 
God with the human ideal — His affinity to the extreme left of Unitarianism — 
Literary merit of his productions— Parallel between Mr. Conway's and Mr. 
Voysey' s congregations. 



Men of a logical order of mind have reproached the Unitarians 
with not making their attempts at a religious synthesis sufificiently 
comprehensive. To keep the name of Christian and at the same time 
to reject the supernatural origin of Christianity is, they think, to take 
pleasure in the equivocal and to needlessly exclude from religious 
communion Jews, Mahommedans, Buddhists, and even Theists, who 
refuse to recognise the divine authority or the infallibility of the Bible. 
Besides, it is urged, why build up purely moral principles into a 
dogma when there is a declared purpose to found a religious associa- 
tion, not upon identity of belief, but upon simple uniformity to the 
needs of the religious sentiment. The universal church is not a Free 
Christian Church, but a Free Church, and therefore open to all who 
believe in the existence of God, and feel the need of approaching 
Him in an act of worship with their fellows. 

An attempt was made in France, as the reader may be aware, at the 
end of last century by the Society of Theophilanthropes, to establish 



104 RATIONALISTIC CONGREGATIONS 

a system of worship on the basis of what were considered the truths 
of Natural Religion, or the principles believed to be held and accepted 
by all nations, which should be capable of uniting the adherents of 
every form of faith in a common aspiration to the Deity. It is on 
reasoning analogous to this, that the important congregation, to which 
the Rev. C. Voysey ministers in London, bases its claims for existence, 

Mr. Voysey was a distinguished clergyman of the Established 
Church, who from the time he took Orders, manifested an extreme 
independence of religious opinions. He at length commenced the 
publication of a small periodical entitled — The Sling and the Stone^ 
in which he called in question the Divinity of Christ, the Fall of Man, 
the Atonement, Original sin, and other orthodox beliefs. This excited 
such a storm of indignation in the ranks of both the High and the Low 
Church -parties, that the English Church Union and the Church 
Defence Association^ each offered £500 to cover the expenses of a 
trial of the offender for heresy, before a competent tribunal. As the 
result, Mr. Voysey was deprived of his position in the Church, when, 
without even passing through the Unitarian stage of development, on 
the ist of October, 187 1, he founded an independent congregation 
to which he still ministers. 

St. George's Hall, where I heard Mr. Voysey, for the first time, in 
1874, is a small structure, the interior and fitting up of which are an 
exact counterpart of our (the Brussels) Cafe Concert Halls. The 
stage was shut off by a curtain of red cloth. As a matter of course 
there was neither altar nor pulpit ; but simply a kind of platform also 
draped in red cloth and raised somewhat abOve the footlights. The 
congregation, at the time of my visit, was composed of from two to 
three hundred persons, who bore the stamp of the intellectual, if not 
of the upper classes. 

A circular, distributed in profusion over the seats, apprised me that 
the congregation had begun to raise funds for the erection of a Church, 
which was not to be commenced till the contributions had attained 
a sufficient amount to complete it. At the beginning of April, 1874, 
the sum reached was £613 i6s. od. 3 to-day it amounts to £2000. A 
single person figures among the contributors for £500. Several 
anonymous donors have given as much as £100 each. I noticed 
among the contributors the names of officers and baronets, and many 



BEYOND THE PALE OF CHRISTIANITY. 105 

eminent scientists, such as the late Sir Charles Lyell, Sir John 
Bowring, &c. 

The Rev. C Voysey conforms to a type of clergymen which is 
somewhat common in England : small in statue, a slight tendency to 
corpulence, black and smooth hair and a ckrefully shaved face. I 
found on the seat where I was placed, as I had done in Unitarian 
Churches, a form of service specially drawn up for the use of the 
congregation. And just as Dr. Martineau's Ten Services^ or the 
earlier of them, present a resume of the Anglican Liturgy, in which 
all Trinitarian formularies are suppressed, so the Rev. C. Voysey's 
Revised Prayer Book appears, to be a condensed form of it, stripped 
of every Christian formulary, with this exception, that several of the 
services have been composed by the compiler himself. I saw for the 
first time rites destined for the cremation of the dead, embodied in a 
liturgy j up to the present, however, the law has not permitted that 
method of disposing of the dead to come into general use. 

When at the commencement of the voluntary Mr. Voysey ascended 
the platform, which serves him as reading-desk and pulpit, I noticed 
that he had retained the surplice and stole of the Anglican clergy. 
At first, a visitor cannot help feeling a certain surprise when he hears 
the most energetic attacks made not only upon the principles of cer- 
tain sects, but even upon the doctrines and traditions of Christ 
himself, by a man who wears the vestments of the Christian priest, 
makes use of a service based upon those of the Churches, and draws 
a part of his devotional readings from the Bible. In his published 
sermon, Christianity versus Universal Brotherhood^ for instance, after 
denying to Unitarians the right to make a distinction between the 
dogmatic and moral parts of their beliefs, Mr. Voysey reproaches 
Christianity with having accepted, only against its will, the great 
principles of charity and toleration, so often called into requisition by 
those who reject and oppose it. ^ 

This apparent anomaly disappears, however, when it is considered 
in relation to Mr. Voysey's conviction that above all things, in the 
matter of worship, we should try to introduce new ideas in the old 
forms. "As some form must be used," he says, in the Preface of his 
Revised Prayer Book, " the form most likely to find acceptance would 
be one which was already partly familiar to English ears, and yet 



106 RATIONALISTIC CONGREGATIONS 

Stripped of all that has become obsolete and out of harmony with a 
pure Theism."! 

The sermon I heard on the day to which I have alluded, was in 
refutation of the doctrine of the Atonement : that is to say, the 
expiation attributed to Christ for the redemption of humanity. That 
sermon, which might have been preached in any Unitarian pulpit, 
afforded me no insight whatever into the special doctrines of a Church 
which claims to be unique in its kind. Fortunately, I procured at 
the door the sermon preached by Mr. Voysey at the inaugural cere- 
mony, on the ist of October, 1871. "Our first work,'' says he, in 
this genuine manifesto, " is to undermine, assail, and, if possible, to 
destroy that part of the prevailing religious belief which we deem to 
be false " ; that is, as he explains in detail, almost all the doctrines of 
Christianity. " But our work," he adds, " does not rest here. We 
should be both distressed and ashamed if all our energies were to be 
exhausted in putting down even false belief. So far from that, we 
only desire to eradicate false beliefs, that we may be able to plant 
true beliefs in their place." Hence, as he goes on to explain, it will 
be his duty, in the first place, to affirm his belief in the existence of 
a Supreme Being, infinitely good and just, whom, for want of a better 
name, he will call God. Then will come the affirmation of a future 
life, which he considers inseparably connected with the belief in God. 
"The two," he contends, "must stand or fall together." And, lastly, 
he will seek to develop truth, justice, purity, and brotherhood, which 
represent, in his opinion, the true marks of the religious character. 

In 1880, the "Congregation of the Rev. C. Voysey" abandoned, 
at the suggestion of their minister, their decidedly personal designa- 
tion and replaced it by the title " Theistic Church." In connection 
with this change of name, they adopted the following manifesto, in 
which some few rather high-flown expressions are to be found, as is 
often the case in the most rationalistic English theology ; but these 
must rK)t cause us to forget its elevation of thought and its breadth 
of sentiment. Speaking of the Church, its principles, beliefs, and 
practical aims, they say : — 
" Its Main Objects are — 

I. To promote the adoption of Theistic principles and beliefs. 

I. The Revised Prayer Book, compiled by the Rev. C. Voysey, 2nd Edition. 
London, 1875. 



BEYOND THE PALE OF CHRISTIANITY. 107 

2. To furnish a reasonable method of satisfying the religious emotions 
of those persons who can no longer believe the orthodox dogmas. 
" The Leading Principles of Theism are — 

1. That it is the right and duty of every man to think for himself 
in matters of religion. 

2. That there is no finality in religious beliefs; that higher and 
higher views of God and of His dealings are always possible : 
and therefore it is to be expected and wished that future gener- 
ations will improve upon the creed now held by Theists. 

3. That it is our duty to obtain the highest and purest truth dis- 
coverable ; and when it is discovered, to proclaim it honestly and 
courageously. In like manner to denounce all detected error. 

4. That personal excellence of character is necessary to a right 
knowledge of the goodness of God. Religion is thus based 
upon morality, and not morality upon religion. 

5. That Theism is not aggressive against persons, but only against 
erroneous opinions. 

6. That Theism recognises the value of all moral and religious 
truth, wheresoever it may be found. 

*' The Beliefs of Theism may be thus briefly expressed — 

1. That there is one living and true God, and there is no other 
God beside Him. 

2. That He is perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness, and there- 
fore every one is safe in His everlasting care. 

3. Therefore that none can ever perish or remain eternally in 
suffering or in sin ; but all shall reach at last a home of good- 
ness and blessedness in Him. 

4. That as we have been created for this goodness, it is our wisdom 
and duty to be as good as we can, and to shun and to forsake 
all evil. 

"These Beliefs are founded upon — 

The Religious sense acting in harmony with the Reason, the Con- 
science, and the Affections. 
"Theism inculcates — 

1. A filial trust in God, which may be strengthened and enlarged 
by prayer and communion. 

2. Worship of God in public and in private. 

3. A life of joy and thankfulness expressing itself in good deeds." 



108 RATIONALISTIC CONGREGATIONS 

Now, careful as Mr. Voysey was to distinguish between dogmas 
which from their nature are necessarily immutable and beliefs which 
are open to change from all kinds of influences, this official adoption 
of Theism, pledging as it did the congregation to Opinions which up 
to that time had remained personal on the part of the minister, could 
not fail to detach the secular and agnostic supporters who had rallied 
round him in his struggle with the Anglican Church, but who were by 
no means ready to accept his religious opinions. And to this must 
be added the fact that Mr. Voysey does not hesitate to strike right 
and left, since in opposition to the practices of Unitarians, among 
whom doctrinal controversy is for the most part avoided, he devotes 
a large number of his sermons to the refutation of the errors of ortho- 
doxy or the negations of scepticism. Still the losses he sustained from 
among his original adherents in consequence of this change, were, it 
would seem, rapidly made good by the accession of new elements, 
and I may remark that on the occasion of my visit in 1882, I noticed 
far more attention and devotional fervour, on the part of the congre- 
gation, than was observable eight years previously. 

Nor is this the only crisis that the Theistic congregation has had to 
pass through. For on a certain occasion its members found the doors 
of St. George's Hall, in which they had been accustomed to worship, 
unexpectedly closed against them. An Evangelical congregation had 
surreptitiously come to an understanding with the proprietors of the 
hall, on the principle that business takes no account of creeds, in 
order to devote to the God of Calvin and Wesley that den of unbelief, 
which was a scandal to the pious world. Happily, Mr. Voysey suc- 
ceeded in finding another hall in the neighbourhood — Langham 
Hall — which he still occupies. According to the information with 
which he was good enough to furnish me, the congregation numbers 
from five to six hundred subscribing members or adherents. During 
the first eleven years the contributions of the congregation, over and 
above those relating to the building fund, amounted to more than 
£13,000. This sum does not include £1,100 devoted to charitable 
purposes.^ The congregation possesses no special organ in the press 

I. The sum total contributed to the movement up to the present time (1885) 
amounts to ;(^2i,ooo, with ;!^i,200 more collected for charities alone. It appears, 
too, that there have been nine marriages, twelve burials, and thirty-three children 
brought for dedication and benediction during the thirteen-and-a-half years the 
congregation has been in existence. — Translator. 



BEYOND THE PALE OF CHRISTIANITY. 109 

for spreading its views, but it has Mr. Voysey's sermons printed 
weekly, and circulates them widely among the educated classes. The 
total number of sermons thus distributed amounted some time since, 
to 450,000.^ 

It may be affirmed indeed by way of summarizing its condition and 
prospects, that Mr. Voysey's congregation has successfully passed 
through the chief difficulties incidental to the establishment of- every 
New Church, and it is probable that even the disappearance of its 
founder now would not lead to the dispersion of its members. If, as 
there is every reason to hope, it succeeds in securing the funds 
required for building a Church in the heart of London, the movement 
will form a decisive answer to those who in these days contest the 
possibility of» establishing a permanent Church on the principles of 
pure Theism.2 

1. Vide Our Aims, principles and Beliefs, the eleventh anniversary sermon, 
preached at Langham Hall, Oct. 1st, 1882, by the Rev. Charles Voysey, 

2. It may be stated here that at the end of 1884, the " Theistic Congregation " 
were able to purchase the lease of the Scots' Church, Swallow Street, Piccadilly, 
and that they began to worship in the new building on Easter Sunday of the pre- 
sent year — 1885. In relation to this change of domicile, Mr. Voysey preached two 
special sermons, the former in the old and the latter in the new building, from each 
of which an extract or two will be of interest to the reader. In his last sermon, 
for instance, at Langham Hall, which was preached on the 29th of March, he 
speaks as follows of the difficulties passed through, of the fidehty of his people, of 
the -acknowledged value of his work, and of the need of personal coiisecration in 
order to ensure future prosperity : — 

"Almost from the very day when we lost our tenure of St. George's Hall, and 
took up our quarters here in Langham Hall, our prosperity began to decline, and — 
there is nothing to be gained by disguising the fact — the cause has been going down 
steadily, annual subscriptions diminished, the number of seat-holders diminished, 
the visits of strangers from the highest ranks in society became fewer, the building 
fund was almost forgotten, and the general fund in a chronic state bordering on 
collapse. The gaps caused by death among the influential, the wealthy and the 
aristocratic were not refilled. Whole families were separated from our congrega- 
tion by emigration to the provinces and to the colonies. Some persons left us 
because they were offended at what they heard ; the sermons were not sufficiently 
Atheistic, or not sufficiently Christian, were too controversial, or not controversial 
enough, to please them. Others left us because we would not use our pulpit or our 
bookstall in the interests of party politics or of some scheme or crotchet to which 
they were primarily devoted. Others stayed away, and alas, there were many of 
them, because the surroundings were so poor and mean and the congregation so 
scanty. Some also departed because they had what the Apostle called so scornfully 
' itching ears ' and cared only for novelties, startling assertions or bitter outbursts 
against beliefs which they discredited. 

*' Now, this fire of adversity has not been all evil, not all against the cause, but 



110 RATIONALISTIC CONGREGATIONS 

Some years ago, I visited another Theistic congregation in London, 
which has since disappeared — the Free Church — organized, in New- 
man Street, by the Society of Independent Religious Reformers. 
Here, again, however, the somewhat imposing title. Free Church, 
referred, as regards the building, to a mere Music Hall, of rectangular 
shape, with a stage, and a circular gallery at each end of it. A leaflet, 
placed in my hands as I entered the building, contained, on the one 
side, a list of the sermons announced for each Sunday of the month, 
and, on the other, the fundamental rules of the Independent Religious 

very much good, very much for its advancement. It has tried our work, of what 
sort it is. It has tried and tested too our workers, of what sort they are. The 
* wood, hay, stubble' and paper supporters it has burnt up, and the wind has carried 
their ashes afar. The iron the silver and the gold the fire has cleansed, refined and 
made to glow with greater brilliance. The fire has strengthened* and toughened 
the sincere and the true of heart. It has given them courage in the face of the 
world's anger or scorn. It has welded together souls that would have neither cared 
for each other nor for truth in easier and more prosperous times. It has brought 
out the pure metal purged of its dross and burnt away any lingering regard for the 
world's smile, and every lurking motive that was not highest and best. And I 
know how all this terrible adversity has acted on my work. The darker the clouds, 
the more threatening the aspect of the adverse sky, the greater has been my effort 
to do my best — my poor best if you will — but I have felt more anxious to do my 
best and have devoted more time and energy to make my work good and true, 
because I saw it needed far higher work than mine to save the cause from extinc- 
tion. I became more bold, more daring, in my open avowal of what I believed to 
be the needful truth, the more I saw that some did not like it and were offended at 
it. The fire of their blame only burnt away the little lingering cowardice which 
lay hidden in my heart. And when I think of the constancy, devotion and fidelity 
which most of you have shown and which have alone made the work to endure so 
long and under such frightful drawbacks, again I must thank our adversity for 
testing these qualities and for calling out these energies and that zeal and those 
magnificent sacrifices which you have so generously and heroically given without 
the slightest hope or prospect of any earthly reward. You must feel, because you 
are, more noble for having overcome personal prejudices, dislikes, love of ease and 
social regard in order to do what you believed to be right, and what was demanded 
oi you because there was no one else who would do it." 

"Time would utterly fail me if I were to try to give you any adequate idea of 
the testimony which I have been receiving all along to the spiritual benefit of our 
religion and to the spread of our beliefs. I have hundreds and thousands of letters 
from men and women in various parts of the world full of joy and thankfulness at 
the proclamation of such blessed truths. Some are delighted to find openly expressed 
what they had so long privately believed. Others and many more have been helped 
by our Theism out of confusion of thought, out of lingering prejudice and supersti- 
tion, out of morbid fear and doubt of God, and are never weary of thanking God 
for their deliverance and praying God to help and prosper our Church. Others 
again, once wholly Agnostic and the religious sense all but extinguished, have come 
round into a higher and more reasonable state of mind ; they have shaken off the 
incubus of pessimism ; they no longer believe that in Materialism is to be found the 



BEYOND THE PALE OF CHRISTIANITY. Ill 

Reformers. They stated their object to be — " First, to secure the 
association of such persons as are desirous of cultivating the religious 
sentiment in a manner which shall be free from the evil spirit of creed, 
the intolerance of sectarianism and the leaven of priest-craft, and of 
such persons as respect the authority of reason, and who reverently 
accept the decrees of conscience ; secondly, to discover and methodize 
truth, connected with either the laws of nature, the progress of thought, 
or the lives of good men of all ages and countries, so that they may 

full solution of human life, much less the solution of the still grander problem of 
the universe and its eternal cause. They have learnt not to contemn the idea and 
the practice of prayer and many of them have even learnt to pray. And — what is 
more encouraging — those who have been able to gain clearer -insight and to have 
some true faith in God, have strongly prophesied that if religion is to survive, it 
must be, like ours, one that is in harmony with reason and common sense and yet 
not a mere cold philosophy destitute of power to kindle the emotions. In all that 
God has hitherto helped us and in this also — that our faithful discharge of our duty 
in coming here to worship has resulted in a greater clearing of our own minds in 
looking at truth and its counterfeits, in a greater plainness of speech arising there- 
from, better still, in stronger faith in God and His loving purposes, in wider hope 
for universal bliss, and in more ardent love to our Father and to our brethren. Our 
devotion to this work has had a manifest influence in improving our lives and our 
character. " 

**I have had to live with God and to hold more firmly by His hand, and to 
cling closer to his bosom the more I felt estranged, isolated and exiled from the 
approval and encouragement and sympathy of the world, sometimes of my dearest 
friends. The harder and more painful my task, the greater strength and peace have 
I had through trusting in Him. But do not mistake my purpose in referring thus 
so very personally to my own experience. I do so only because I know that one 
of the best ways, if not the best way, to impress others is to wield a bare fact, to 
state the simple and exact truth as we know it and have felt it, aye, and tested it a 
thousand times. A Church, so-called, composed of men and women who never 
pray, who never hold any kind of communion with God, if it could last a week, 
would be the most empty and contemptible of all the shams with which demented 
humanity has ever amused itself. It would be composed of ' souls which had been 
put to silence,' souls, for the time being, as dead as a corpse. And if I desire, as I 
do so deeply and fervently, that the Theistic Church shall live d^ndi prosper, shall 
live as life is measured by its Divine Author and piver, and shall prosper as pros- 
perity is measured by the Divine standard, I cannot put that desire into plainer 
words or give it deeper meaning than by saying this : — I would that every one of 
you would pray without ceasing, would live a life of prayer, would cling close to 
God and hold by His hand and be guided by His will and trust Him, trust Him 
utterly, with every breath you breathe." 

Turning to the first sermon preached in his New Church, we find Mr. Voysey 
speaking in these words of gratitude and rejoicing : — 

" This Easter-day may be taken by us as a symbol, not of the resurrection to life 
of a dead Saviour, but of the rising out of the ground of adversity and obscurity, 
of wintry cold and torpidity, of those living germs of truth which we prize so 



112 RATIONALISTIC CONGREGATIONS 

be rendered of practical value as guides to a healthful, moral, and 
manly life ; thirdly, to assist, as a religious duty, in the regeneration 
of Society, by co-operating with every organized body whose aim is to 
abolish superstition, ignorance, intemperance, political injustice, or 
any other of the numerous evils which now afflict Society." Every 
person, "male or female," desirous of aiding in the promotion of 
these various objects, might join the Society without signing any 
confession of faith, provided such person undertook to pay an annual 
contribution of not less than a pound sterling. 

The services consisted, as, indeed, everywhere else, of an alterna- 
tion of hymns and prayers, together with devotional readings and a 

dearly, into a happy and hopeful spring. Of the vicissitudes of our society it is not 
needful to say much. But one cannot mention those days without recalling the 
dear names of many who are gone to their heavenly rest and are not here to-day 
to witness the fruit of their pious exertions. Among our committee were to be 
found Dr. Patrick Black, Sir John Bowring, Samuel Courtauld, Charles Darwin, 
Erasmus Darwin, Sir Charles Lyell, Andrew Pritchard, Judge Stansfield, and our 
chairman, the Right Rev. Samuel Hinds, formerly Bishop of Norwich, and many 
others, amounting to 254, whose deaths we still deeply deplore. 

''In 1875, we were compelled to leave St. George's Hall and go to Langham 
Hall, much to our disadvantage in every way. But in 1880 a very important 
change was made, and I claim the full credit or discredit of having urged it and 
finally brought it about. The work had suffered from ignorant or wilful misrepre- 
sentation and we were not sufficiently known to be a really religious body, working 
from religious motives for a religious end. Hence it became needful to drop the 
unpleasant and personal title of the Voysey EstablisJwient Fund and to re-organize 
the society and give it a distinctive and . religious name. In this measure I was 
supported by the counsel and sanction of the late Dean Stanley. I, on my part, 
also wished that the property of the Church should be so vested on a new Trust 
that the work could be carried on in the event of my death or retirement, and this 
could not have been done under the old Trust, which was 'to establish me in a 
Church of my own in London. ' So we re-organized ourselves and adopted the 
title of The Theistic Church. This day, then, after fourteen years, is fulfilled 
the purpose for which the Voysey Establishment Fund was set on foot, and I need 
hardly say what must be in the heart of every true Theist amongst us : — That we 
rejoice and are exceeding glad — yea, unspeakably thankful. 

" ' This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.' ' This is the day 
which the Lord hath made : we will rejoice and be glad in it. Help us now, 
O Lord, send us now prosperity.' 

" The emotions which these words express are too deep in your hearts and mine 
to bear reiteration. Instead of dwelling on our thankfulness in words, it is far 
better that I should follow the natural current of thought and feeling which is always 
set flowing by heartfelt gratitude. From time immemorial, as our dear Book of 
Psalms shows, the sense of God's bounty and loving-kindness always begets a 
deeper sense of our responsibilities and a longing to give some practical proof of 
our thankfulness, ' to show forth Thy praise O Lord, not only with our lips but in 



BEYOND THE PALE OF CHRISTIANITY. 113 

sermon. The sermon which I heard was entitled, " The Means and 
the Glory of Spreading the Knowledge of Religion." The preacher 
said a little about everything in it ; and he specially insisted upon the 
mistake made by Christian missionaries who treat as idolaters, if not 
as savages, peoples greatly advanced in the knowledge of God, instead 
of presenting themselves, as St. Paul did to the Athenians, with the 
simple claim to complete the ideas of their hearers respecting the 
Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. Unfortunately, his 
tone was somewhat monotonous and magisterial, apart from the fact 
that the address rose but little above historical criticism. In spite of 
the intervention of the singing, I could have believed myself present 
at a critical exposition or lecture on the history of religions, rather 
than at a religious service, though one of a purely Theistic order. 
I may add that the congregation took no part in the service ; that 
they remained seated the whole time, and did not join in the hymns, 
even in the faintest manner ; nor was there any liturgy used to indi- 
cate the changes of the service. These circumstances, taken together, 
afford an explanation of the failure of this movement, which, as regards 
principles, was so closely connected with Mr. Voysey's Theistic 
Church. It is worthy of remark also that Mr. Voysey has arrived at 

our lives, by giving up ourselves to Thy service and by walking before Thee in 

holiness and righteousness all our days to Thy honour and glory.' We 

rejoice most because, as we hope, the Truth which is so dear to us will become 
more widely known. We take a legitimate pleasure in thinking of the greater 
publicity and prominence of our Church, of the many who will become acquainted 
with the fact of our work and be able easily to learn for themselves what it is we 
believe and hope and wish to impart. For this only do we rejoice in our greater 
publicity, because we hope and expect to bring more people of our own way of 
thinking to come here and worship with us and also to bring into the fold many 
who are dissatisfied with the old Churches and creeds and may be induced to em- 
brace our religious beliefs and to join with us in worship. It is our hope also to 
bring under the influence of our religion many out of the vast masses of those who 
never go to worship at all. I must add here also, though I am half ashamed of it, 
that we rejoice in having become possessed of this Church because it will remove a 
prejudice common to so many minds against worshipping in a Hall or other place 
of secular entertainment. No longer can the excuse be made that we assemble in 

an unworthy or an unsuitable place This Theistic Church of ours has 

only lived till now through faithful attendance, marked as it has been in some cases 
by persons travelling lo, 20, 30 and even 50 miles to be present at the service and 
in all weathers. You will say, and say most truly, that the outer world will judge 
of your love for the cause, of your attachment to the creed you profess, by your 
actions and not by your profession, and therefore if you desire others to come into 
our fold and worship with us and catch our enthusiasm, we must at least be here to 
receive them, must show that we do value the reasonable worship, and are ready to 

I 



114 RATIONALISTIC CONGREGATIONS 

the present form of worship by the continued and logical development 
of his spiritual vocation, while the Free Church of the Independent 
Religious Reformers bears incontestable witness to the stiffness and 
lifelessness of a religious service which is purely the outcome of 
rational principles. 

Among the Theistic organizations of London I must not omit to 
mention the Humanitarians, were it only by way of keeping my 
recollection fresh and green. As I was walking up the Pentonville 
slope, on a certain Sunday in 1875, in order to attend Unity Church, 
the charming Unitarian place of worship, at Islington, I passed in 
front of a building called Claremont Hall, where there was a bill 
posted up, which announced a series of lectures to be given by the 
Humanitarian Society. Among the names of the lecturers there were 
several indicative of a Jewish, a German, and even a Sclavonic origin. 
The subjects for treatment were of the most varied description, from 
*'The religion of God" to "The Social Condition of the Blind." My 
curiosity having been aroused, I plunged into a dark passage, follow- 
ing two young men who were conversing in German. I soon found 
myself in a large hall provided with seats, where some score or so of 
persons were sitting at their ease. Near to a platform intended for 
the preacher stood the inevitable piano, which was already trembling 
beneath the touch of a young person dressed in black. The time 
passed on. A second air succeeded the first, then a third, and yet there 

make sacrifices of comfort in our zpal for the cause God help us all to 

walk in that path and uphold us when our feet would slip and guide us lest we go 
astray ! O Thou Eternal Righteous Father, who hast been our refuge and strength 
in every time of trouble, and hast mercifully brought us to this House of Prayer, 
pour upon us the riches of thy grace that we may faithfully and godly serve Thee ; 
that this Church which we this day consecrate anew to Thy service may be to all 
our hearts a means of grace, a comfort i)\ all our sorrow and a strength against all 
temptation. Keep far from us vanity and lies, compromise and cowardice, indiffer- 
ence and insincerity ; and graciously bestow upon us the spirit of humility and truth, 
of honesty and courage, of earnest faith and true religion, of fervent love to Thee 
and to all men. And if our work be good in thy sight, ' Help us now, O Lord, 
O Lord, send us now prosperity.' " 

These passages indicate the deep religious spirit which permeates Mr. Voysey's 
teaching in spite of his theological antagonism to Christian dogmas. Had that 
teaching been almost exclusively negative the movement would have died out long 
ago. Nor need we wonder at the religious fervour which is displayed here. His- 
torical considerations and influences apart, there is not the slightest reason why pure 
Theism should not create the most beautiful piety ; for was not this Theism the 
creed of the grand old Prophets and even of Jesus himself, if he is to be regarded 
as truly human? — Translator, 



BEYOND THE PALE OF CHRISTIANITY. 115 

was no sign of the preacher or lecturer's appearance. Wearied by this 
waiting, I at length lost all patience and beat a quiet retreat ; but 
not without attracting the attention of a respectable elderly man 
standing near the door, who slipped into my hands a pamphlet with 
these attractive headings: — "The Age of Light," "The God of 
Nature," "Humanitarian Marriages," "Fifteen Points of the Religion 
of God," &c. 

Imagine my astonishment at finding in the theories preached at the 
Pentonville Music Hall, the system of Pierre Leroux, who claimed to 
find in pagan philosophy, and even in Christianity, grounds for a 
belief in the transmigration of souls within the limits of human life 
here on earth. The Humanitarians tend more to Pantheism perhaps, 
since they define God as an eternal and indivisible Being, whose 
essence pervades the whole universe in the double form of matter 
and spirit ; but their theory of the soul is an exact reproduction of 
the doctrine of the French writer in question. 

Over and above an exposition of the "religion of God," the 
pamphlet contained several curious dissertations and controversial 
statements, — a confession of faith which only needed to be signed 
" conscientiously, in order to give any person the right to use the 
name and enjoy the privileges of the Humanitarians ; a few words of 
gratitude to the " God of Nature," entitled the Prayer of the Hu??ian- 
itarians ; certain extracts from discourses delivered in the open air, 
" superior to and superseding the first four chapters of the New 
Testament, as well as the Sermon on the Mount " ; and, finally, the 
rites for the " Humanitarian solemnization of marriage." These 
rites, it appears, were made use of for the first time in 1873, on the 
occasion of the marriage of Mr. Joachim Kaspary, the chief apostle 
of the movement, with the daughter of the originator. But as the 
civil legislation of England, which is not as yet "humanitarianized," 
would not have recognized the marriage had it taken place in 
Claremont Hall, the bride and bridegroom, with their friends, were 
driven, per force, to use, for the ceremony, a chapel, whose minister, 
Mr. Conway, had complied with the requirements of the law by 
having it duly licensed. 

On my visit to London in the summer of 1882, I expected to find 
that the Humanitarians had long since disappeared ; but, instead of 
this, I found them established in the heart of London, in a house in 



116 RATIONALISTIC COMMUNITIES 

Castle Street, where Mr. Kaspary, then become the head of the sect 
by right of succession, had constructed, in his back premises, a small 
wooden chapel capable of seating some sixty persons. As regards 
the service, it seemed to me simplified by the absence of the piano, 
and it was also commenced at the appointed hour. It consisted of 
an apologetic kind of discourse and an extemporaneous prayer by Mr. 
Kaspary, with a sort of interlude from Mrs. Kaspary, who ascended 
the platform to read the "Fifteen Precepts of the Religion of the 
Humanitarians." The congregation, a by no means numerous one, 
was formed exclusively of members of the male sex. 

Still, the Humanitarians continue their mission with an energy 
which testifies to their sincerity ; for they, connect with their weekly 
Sunday services preaching in the open air — during the summer in 
Regent's Park, and under the arches of Chelsea Bridge in the winter. 
They also advertise their Castle Street meetings in the Saturday's 
Daily News^ and they distribute an immense number of tracts, either 
gratuitously or at a reduced price. 

The strangest aspect of this movement is not that an individual 
should have invented or formulated such a vague and questionable 
system as Humanitarianism, but that people should have been found 
to believe, follow, and support it. As yet, in truth, save and except 
the marriage of its adherents, preaching has constituted the only 
manifestation of the Humanitarian faith; but they will doubtless 
develop their ritual as fast as the need for this makes itself felt. 
It cannot be denied, indeed, that we see, in what I have described, 
the infancy of a new religion. If the movement does not succumb 
during this embryonic period, which may be called its metaphysical 
phase, we may foresee, from its tendency to dogmatic assertion, that 
it will not be slow to transform itself into a positive system of worship, 
with its necessary train of spontaneous or reflective practices,* if not 
with a whole system of theology, based upon some pretended revela- 
tion. At present, however, Humanitarianism constitutes a tolerably 
harmless doctrine, which is perfectly moral in its precepts as well as 
in its practices, and is wholly confined to that super-sensible sphere 
where all sorts of religious speculations are permissible, so far as they 
are sincerely advanced, from the very fact that the processes of the 
scientific method can demonstrate neither their truth nor their 
falseness. 



BEYOND THE PALE OF CHRISTIANITY. 117 

It should be clearly understood that, in mentioning the Humani- 
tarian Society in this enumeration of the Theistic congregations, I do 
so because it forms a sort of religious curiosity, and not from any 
illusive ideas as to its real importance. It is only Mr. Voysey's con- 
gregation which offers to Theism a rallying point or centre of action 
capable of assuming a great development, if it should succeed in 
uniting all who accept its doctrines. Unhappily, it has to struggle 
against that absence of enthusiasm, or rather spirit of proselytism, 
which generally characterizes Theists, and leads them, as I have 
already intimated, either to remain in the churches which they have 
really outgrown or to shut themselves up in a sort of religious indi- 
vidualism when they have left them. 

It is perhaps here that I should describe the doctrine of the 
Reformed Jews, who, rejecting the infallibility of their sacred books, 
have made common cause with a rationalistic Monotheism. The 
Jewish Reformation, which was set on foot, at the beginning of this 
century, by the German Jews, with certain simplifications of ritual, 
and which gradually extended to the Jews of all civilized countries, 
is at present seeking to denationalize the Jewish religion, or rather to 
transform it into a universal religion, by stripping off all the rites, 
practices, and ceremonies which possess a national, as distinguished 
from a purely religious, character. " Its realization," wrote, a short 
time since, one of the most distinguished representatives of the new 
school in England, Mr. Claude Montefiore, "would put Judaism on 
the same footing as Christianity, and would involve the removal of 
the present preliminary obstacles in the way of the diffusion, not yet 
desired by all reformers, of the old Jewish religion beyond the limits 
of the Jewish race." In this way, the reproach so frequently urged 
against Judaism, that it is only a tribal religion, would disappear, and 
the true Chinese wall, which separates its adherents from the people 
among whom they live, would fall to the ground. But the change 
cannot be made, as events have shown, unless Judaism also abandons 
those positive beliefs which are irreconcilable with modern science.^ 

The Jewish religion has always consisted of two distinct elements : 
a collection of doctrines, in which the belief in the unity of God is 

I. Vide an article, by Mr. Montefiore, entitled "Is Judaism a Tribal Religion?" 
in the Contemporary Review, of November, 1882. 



118 RATIONALISTIC CONGREGATIONS 

as a key-stone to the arch ; and the ceremonial practices peculiar to 
it as a special system. Regarded from a doctrinal point of view, 
reformed Judaism, according to Mr. Montefiore, affirms, in comm^on 
with orthodox Judaism, " the unity of God, His just government, the 
free relation of every man to God, the continual progress of humanity 
as a whole, the immortality of the soul, the Divine election of Israel, 
and that the Jews, under the will of God, possess a specific religious 
mission, not yet entirely fulfilled." On the other hand, the reforming 
party reject the authority of the Talmud, the literal infallibifity of the 
Bible, comprising the Pentateuch, the beHef in the advent of the 
Messiah, and the restoration of the Jewish kingdom in Palestine. 
While they hold, moreover, that the Bible contains the essential 
spirit of Judaism, they contend that it no longer contains this in its 
entirety; and they do not hesitate to accept the most advanced con- 
clusions of contemporary criticism. As to ceremonial practices, they 
openly reject — with the exception of circumcision, which they make 
optional for converts — all the ritualistic, sanitary, and social prescrip- 
tions which are not possessed of an exclusively religious significance, 
as well as the Jewish laws relative to marriage and the regulations 
respecting the Levites. Finally, they have introduced into the 
synagogue the common or current speech of the worshippers, and 
suppressed the greater part of the festivals which possessed a purely 
national significance. 

Under these circumstances, it may be asked whether Judaism is not 
in a condition to offer to Theists of Christian origin that historical 
rallying-point which, according to Miss F. Power Cobbe, they stand 
in need of. It is to be borne in mind, indeed, that the Jewish Refor- 
mation is still in progress, if not as regards dogma, at least in relation 
to its ceremonial practices. That prescription of the ancient law 
which is most repugnant to modern ideas, circumcision, is precisely 
the institution they seem to find the greatest difficulty in completely 
abolishing. Nor has the use of Hebrew entirely disappeared from 
their ritual, while the Old Testament remains the book of devotion 
par excellence^ and the only one used in the services of the synagogue. 
In short, Mr. Montefiore himself declares that the reformed faith, 
while desirous of becoming a universal religion in form as well as in 
substance, intends to remain a historical development of ancient 
Judaism. 



BEYOND THE PALE OF CHRISTIANITY. 119 

It appears, therefore, that Reformed Judaism simply maintains, 
with respect to Ancient Judaism, the position occupied by Uni- 
tarianism, or even by the Broad Church party, in relation to those 
Protestant Churches which have remained faithful to orthodox 
theology. Still, as Miss Cobbe observes, if the reforming movement 
continues to extend — and such an extension seems to be a question 
of life or death for Judaism — it will undoubtedly become a powerful 
auxiliary of Christian Theism, or Theism of Christian origin, while it 
will even be capable of exercising an important influence on the 
religious future of contemporary Society.^ 

Now, the simple belief in God is still a dogma, however little we 
define the attributes of the Divine Being and make of this definition 
the creed of any church. But if we admit that worship is merely a 
question of feeling, belonging neither to reason nor faith, we must 
free it from every positive formula, no matter how simple and com- 
prehensive this may be. Setting out from this principle, Mr. Moncure 
D. Conway, a gentleman of American origin, who is favourably known 
in English literature, has, for the last twenty years, presided over a 
Church which is open to all those who desire to satisfy their religious 
aspirations, regardless of theological and metaphysical differences of 
belief, with the sole condition that they do not raise to a dogma the 
non-existence of the Deity. Such a conception embraces not only 
Theists of every school, but also Pantheists and the Positivists of the 
school of John Stuart Mill, with all the sceptics who refuse to express 
an opinion with regard to the reality of a Supreme Being. I should 
hesitate to say, indeed, that Materialists might not find a place in 
such a scheme of thought, since it excludes none but professed 
Atheists. 

Mr. Conway, who assumes neither the title of reverend nor doctor, 
is a tall, thin man, about fifty years old, of robust aspect, greyish 
beard and keen changeful glance, whose whole physiognomy reveals 
his transatlantic origin. Born in Virginia and descended from a family 
of planters which has played a part in the history of the United 
States, he was brought up in that branch of the Methodist body 

I. Miss Cobbe relates the curious fact that, at Manchester, some twenty young 
girls, belonging to Unitarian families, have married Jews, adopted Judaism, and 
even taken an active part in the affairs of the synagogue. Vide her article, 
" Progressive Judaism," in the Contemporary Review, of November, 1882. 



120 RATIONALISTIC CONGREGATIONS 

whose members go forth from home every spring, in order to form 
those religious encampments so well described by Bret Harte in his 
stories of American life. Mr. Conway himself, indeed, in a sermon 
on Revivalism, draws a touching picture of the religious associations 
of his childhood, and of the vain attempts he made to share in the 
mental exaltation of his early surroundings. Having remained faith- 
ful to the Union at the time of the Civil War, he withdrew, with his 
young wife, into the State of Ohio, where he organised, into a free 
community, his father's slaves who had fled from Virginia. He then 
crossed the Atlantic in order to defend before the English public, by 
both tongue and pen, the Federal cause, which seemed to be daily 
meeting with increased hostility on the part of the British Govern- 
ment. In the course of this campaign, he had occasion to make his 
voice heard several times at South Place Chapel, where W. J. Fox had 
long been the minister. Mr. Fox was a Unitarian minister who had 
played a brilliant part, during the second generation of this century, 
in the Parliamentary struggles in which Bright and Cobden were such 
conspicuous figures. M. Guizot characterised his speeches as models 
of political eloquence. Nor was he less advanced in his religious 
than in his political opinions; he was in reality one of the first 
Unitarian ministers who openly broke with the supernatural, and 
though he retained the name of Christian, he afterwards remained 
isolated from the Unitarian body. Unfortunately for his congregation, 
when age had compelled him to retire, they could not find a preacher 
possessed of the same shade of opinions, and they were possibly on 
the eve of corporate dissolution, when at the commencement of 1864, 
they made choice of Mr. Conway for their minister. 

Under the guidance of the young American, the congregation was 
not slow to regain the cohesion and the brilliant position of previous 
years ; but this was not done without following that course of evolu- 
tion which, with Fox, had caused it to advance beyond Unitarianism, 
and which, with Mr. Conway, was to carry it -first from Christian 
Theism to pure Theism, and then to a form of faith with still fewer 
limitations : Mr. Conway contends, in short, that the religious senti- 
ment may and must be separated from everything of the nature of 
dogma, belief or hypothesis. 

South Place Chapel is but a few minutes' walk from Moorgate 
Street Station which, on the occasion of my visit, I reached by the 



BEYOND THE PALE OF CHRISTIANITY. 121 

undergound railway. In common with a large number of Noncon- 
formist Chapels, its frontage is in the Greek style. The interior 
possesses a certain air of comfort and is capable of seating from four 
to five hundred persons. The organ is over the entrance. On each 
side there is a gallery supported by slender pillars. A large platform, 
with a sort of desk ornamented by two brass brackets, serves as a 
pulpit. Seats furnished with red cushions and well supplied with 
books fill all the available space. When I entered at a little past 
eleven the chapel was almost empty, but scarcely had the old lady, 
who acts as sacristan, assigned me a place under one of the side 
galleries, before the seats began to fill rapidly. A large number of 
ladies, some of them dressed in an elegant style, agreeably diversified 
the earnest and intelligent aspect of the audience. I learnt after- 
wards, that the congregation is chiefly drawn from the ranks of 
scientists and professional men, with a sprinkling from a few wealthy 
city families. It may be remarked here that South Place Chapel re- 
presents the extreme left in its political as well as in its religious 
tendencies, while at Langham Hall, on the other hand, Mr. Voysey 
has retained in his liturgy the Prayers for the Church, the Queen, the 
Prince of Wales, the two Houses of Parliament, &c. 

Shortly after the entrance of the congregation, Mr. Conway ascended 
the platform in non clerical costume, turned on the gas in order to 
get more light, and, having opened a large book, gave out the number 
of the hymn by which the service was to be commenced. The 
singing was almost entirely confined to a well-trained choir, and the 
readings were chosen by the minister from one of his own works, the 
Sacred Anthology^ in which he has collected with great discrimina- 
tion more than 700 passages drawn from various ancient authors. 
The Bible figures there side by side v/ith the Koran and the Vedas, 
and Confucius is hand and hand with St. Paul. This work, Mr. 
Conway told me, is used in about a dozen congregations — probably 
among those Unitarians who have reached the confines of Theism. 
As to the hymns, they are contained in a small and very elegantly 
bound volume, Hy7nns and Anthems^ and amount to more than 500 
in number. The first 150 were compiled by Mr. W. J. Fox; the rest 
have been added by Mr. Conway. The latter told me he had chosen 
from preference such compositions as avoid all mention of a personal 
and conscious God. He rejects prayer, first because it so easily 



122 RATIONALISTIC CONGREGATIONS 

degenerates into an illogical appeal for change in the order of nature, 
and secondly because by invoking the Divinity, we seem to attribute 
to him sentiments, if not organs, analogous to our own. He has 
therefore replaced it in his order of service by "Meditations" or 
moral and religious monologues, which tend to elevate the soul with- 
out making a direct appeal to the Deity. 

When Mr. Conway had finished his second "meditation," the 
organ was played for a short time in a subdued tone, to give the con- 
gregation an opportunity of entering into themselves and reflecting 
upon the words of their minister ; then the choir suddenly burst forth 
into a well executed anthem by a composer with whose name I am 
not acquainted. Then came the turn for the sermon or discourse. 
Mr. Conway had chosen for the occasion a text of the most secular 
kind: public health. Still, while remaining wholly on practical 
ground, he took care to skilfully describe the relations which subsist 
between health of body and health of soul, in conformity with the 
Protestant adage, that cleanliness is next to godliness. Besides, it is 
one of his fundamental principles that to advance science is to pro- 
mote the cause of religion. 

Mr. Conway sometimes lends his pulpit to noted foreigners. Among 
those who have thus delivered addresses there, to say nothing of 
Unitarian ministers and University professors, we may mention an 
American, Colonel Wentworth Higginson, and an Indian Theist, a 
member of the Royal Council in the island of Ceylon. One evening 
a week, the members of the congregation meet in the chapel, which 
is transformed into a debating hall, in order to discuss some moral or 
political question. In common with the majority of Nonconformist 
congregations drawn from similar classes, the South Place congrega- 
tion organize periodical Soirees for music and conversation, with 
picnics into the country and water parties on the Thames at the right 
season. In this way the Chapel is not only a religious home, but a 
centre or rallying point for the cultivation of social relations among 
its members. Meetings of this kind are generally announced from 
the pulpit, and tickets for them sold in the vestry. 

Some years ago, Mr. Conway devoted his Sunday evenings to a 
second congregation, located in a small iron Church, situate in 
St. Paul's Road, Camden Town, which, from the simplicity of its 



BEYOND THE PALE OF CHRISTIANITY. 123 

architecture, reminded me of the wooden churches of the Scandi- 
navian Peninsula. This congregation was formed by a colony of 
Free Christians, who had migrated, so to speak, from Clarence Road, 
in consequence of a disagreement on the choice of a minister. 
Mr. Conway, whom they had invited to take charge of the move- 
ment, succeeded so well in gradually bringing them over to his ideas 
that, at the time of my visit, in 1875, they had abandoned the name 
" Free Christian " and adopted the same kind of service as that in use 
at South Place Chapel. 

This circumstance affords a striking illustration of the facilities 
which Protestantism affords for advancing, by a gradual and almost 
insensible transition, to forms of worship more in harmony with the 
continued development of the reason of the individual. The Roman 
Church, on the other hand, has its limits clearly circumscribed, and if 
anyone passes beyond these, it is at the expense of an abrupt and 
often painful process, in order to reach at a bound the utmost limits 
of scepticism, or at least to become the prey of religious indifference. 
But among Protestants, in spite of the dogmatic bonds in which they, 
in some cases, attempt to embody their doctrines, the churches of 
to-day are as landmarks, destined to indicate the stages traversed by 
religious thought in its evolution towards a larger and freer ideal. 
Hence it is possible for every one to halt at the precise point of this 
evolution, which corresponds with his own measure of moral and 
intellectual culture, 

I attended two services in the St. Paul's Road Chapel. The form 
of worship was identical with that in Mr. Conway's other Chapel, 
except in so far as the absence of an organ led to the omission of the 
anthem. The singing, thus without an accompaniment, seemed to me 
of a less excellent order, but, on the other hand, the congregation 
joined heartily in the hymns. On each occasion, I found a congre- 
gation of from 200 to 250 persons, who, judging from their appearance, 
were probably drawn from lower strata of Society than those at South 
Place, though still belonging to the middle classes. The service 
struck me as being possessed of more interest and fervour than in the 
older congregation, almost all the people having service-books, and 
no one remaining seated during the singing. 

I must add, however, that the St. Paul's Road congregation is no 
longer in existence, and that even its Chapel has disappeared. It is 



124 RATIONALISTIC CONGREGATIONS 

probable, indeed, that after being sold and taken down, the little 
edifice was re-erected elsewhere, and may perhaps serve to-day as 
the quarters of some regiment of the forces of " General " Booth, in 
his campaign against the army of Satan. 

Mr. Conway lays it down as an axiomatic truth, that an instinct 
compels us to render homage to the superior principle, generally 
embodied in the idea of God ; but, at the same time, he thinks we 
should not press this notion too far, for fear of identifying it with a 
dogmatic formula which may be found on the morrow in antagonism 
with some recent verification of science. For him God is not to be 
distinguished from the human ideal. This ideal, men are but too 
ready to project outside of themselves, as a concrete existence, and 
to clothe with attributes which crystallize into dogmas. Now, how- 
ever valuable a doctrine may be as an individual conviction, it is no 
sooner embodied in a dogma, he contends, than it ceases to be true 
and fruitful — were it even the beUef in the existence of God or the 
immortality of the soul : " If the idea of God have value," says he, 
*"tis as the supreme expression of an individual development of 
thought. If immortaUty be a noble idea it is as the flower of a soul's 
experience. Prescribe them, dictate them, impose them by bribe or 
threat, however refined, they become mere phrases, lifeless traditions, 
transmitted from crumbled systems of antiquity, not only choking the 
well of spiritual life, but heaping rubbish in the Jacob's Well of 
opinion itself." ^ 

It is,* however, in a sermon preached by Mr. Conway in May, 1880, 
on the Religion of Humanity^ that I have found perhaps the most 
complete exposition of his religious beliefs, and in which the trace of 
Hegelian ideas is easy of recognition. He remarks there that history 
as a whole may be summed up as the struggle of humanity against 
external nature, but that our sentiments have always been on the side 
of our adversary. After transforming the forces of nature into Gods,, 
we assigned to them, as their kingdom, all that transcended our own 
control, so much so that the true domain of humanity has always 
been in opposition to, and in conflict with that of Nature. At a later 
time the divinities, which were the personifications of inorganic forces, 
gave place to abstract dogmas ; but these dogmas themselves merely 
translated into the language of theology the relentless activities of 

I. Jacoys Well. A Sermon, 1882. 



BEYOND THE PALE OF CHRISTIANITY. 125 

nature. Is it not a great misfortune to see men thus offering their 
adoration to what genuine religion commands them to combat and to 
subjugate ? " We can little dream what a reinforcement of the human 
work it would be if all the devotion and wealth lavished on deities 
and dogmas were directed to aid and animate man in his tremendous 
task of humanising his world. "^ It is therefore high time for us to 
transfer our veneration and our worship to those moral and intellectual 
forces which aid us in our struggle with the blind forces of the world, 
and which constitute as a whole the essence of humanity. 

Does it follow that there is no God, either of or in nature — that 
there is neither above nor beyond us any Power that tends to the 
realization of the Good ? The religion of humanity answers : " Yes, 
there is a God in nature — a God and Ruler of nature ; but that Divine 
Parent is nowhere discoverable, except in the spirit of humanity. You 
may cry for help to glowing suns and circling stars, to gravitation and 
electricity, to ocean and sky, or to all of them together, but no help 
or ray of pity will you get until you have turned to lean on the heart 
and arm of human love and strength ; for these are the answers of 
the universe to your cry. The proof of love in nature outside you js 
a loving heart inside you. But we must credit nature with what has 
come out of it. . . . Out of it, all was evolved : the thinker to 
warn us ; the man of science to show us the safe path ; the physician 
to heal us ; the artist to beguile us on the way ; the poet to cheer us ; 
the friend, the lover, the father, the mother, who try to guard us, or, 
if we are wounded, seek to heal our wounds. All these were evolved 
out of nature. They show us nature pointing us to humanity, the 
crown and hope of nature's own self, the power which nature has 
created for its own deliverance —in distrusting which we distrust the 
only God in nature, the God manifest within us and in the sweet 
humanities around us."i 

I may add that as a speaker, Mr. Conway, though he does not aim 
at eloquence, possesses a very clear and above all a very moving 
voice. Hence he exercises an ascendency which extends beyond his 
immediate religious surroundings. He has, without doubt, contributed, 
for instance, to the formation in the Unitarian Church, of that group 
which I have already mentioned, as identifying the conception of God 
with the ideal of humanity. There is to be seen among its members, 

I. What is the Religioit of Humanity ? 



126 RATIONALISTIC CONGREGATIONS 

indeed, the same tendency to reject every dogmatic formula in favour 
of an exclusive appeal to the manifestations of sentiment and imagina- 
tion, the same claim that religious services should possess a practical 
character, and the same optimist confidence in the future of humanity. 

In his estimate of the person and work of Christ, Mr. Conway 
follows in some measure the methods of Unitarianism. Among the 
illustrious names inscribed in gilt letters on the walls of his chapel, 
that of Jesus occupies the place of honour above the reading desk, 
and by the side of it are the names of Shakespeare, Socrates, Voltaire 
and Moses. In several of his sermons, he speaks of the founder of 
Christianity as a "representative man," and he neglects no opportunity 
of characterising him as the religious reformer par excellence. All, he 
thinks, that is most elevated or comprehensive in the New Testament, 
all that is best calculated to strengthen the mind and heart, all, in a 
word, that is conformable to the views held at South Place Chapel, is 
really the authentic work of Jesus. On the contrary, whatever is to 
be found there of a narrow and irrational character and therefore 
opposed to the tendencies of our epoch, must have been introduced 
by the Evangelists, who were unable or unwilling to understand the 
Master.i Here Mr. Conway speaks more like a Christian than some 
among the Unitarians. 

Now, in opposition to this, those Unitarians who seem nearest to 
an avowal of the " Religion of Humanity " do not hesitate to retain 
the name of God for that ideal which Mr. Conway treats as an imper- 
sonal and nameless Power, or even as purely subjective. Hence there 
is, with certain of the younger ministers belonging to the advanced 

I. Thus in his Jacobus Well, in reproducing the conversation of the Master with 
the Samaritan woman, he describes, in excellent language, the sublime beauty of 
the words which John puts into the mouth of Jesus : "The hour cometh when ye 
shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. . . . 
But the hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father 
in spirit and in truth." Now these two sentences are separated by the verse which 
affirms that '' salvation is of Jesus." Mr. Conway does not hesitate to say that this 
verse must have been interpolated by the narrator, and he adds that this interposition 
of bigotry and superstition proves how far even the evangelist, most comprehensive 
in his tendencies, was from being able after the lapse of three or four generations, 
to rise to the level of Jesus. Further, the fact that the three synoptical evangelists 
have omitted the entire episode, although they were nearer to Jesus in point of time, 
probably arose from their being too Jewish to appreciate this abandonment of the 
religious monoply of Jerusalem. With this system of critical thought it is easy for 
Mr. Conway to justify his statement "that the real issue is between Christ and 
Christianity." 



BEYOND THE PALE OF CHRISTIANITY. 127 

section of Unitarianism — as, for instance, with the Rev. Frank Walters, 
of Glasgow — a combination of religious elements, which enables them 
to unite, in their preaching, all the results of modern inquiry with the 
spiritual power comprised in the idea of a Supreme Being. 

To sum up my remarks, the religious organization over which 
Mr. Conway presides bears the same relation to the Rev. C. Voysey's 
" Theistic Church " that Unitarianisni does to Liberal Anglicanism. 
In vain will Mr. Voysey urge that his Church retains no dogmas, but 
merely perfectible beliefs ; for his programme will none the less result 
in the exclusion of those who believe in Revelation, on the one hand, 
and those who decline to affirm the existence of a personal God, on 
the other — in a word, the orthodox, together with Pantheists and 
Agnostics. South Place congregation, however, forms an open Church 
to the full extent of the term. Not that the minister is destitute of 
all beliefs, or even dogmas, as to the nature of the universe, the in- 
definite perfectability of human society, and the like. But he does 
not seek to establish between the members of his flock any other 
bond than that of spiritual communion, founded on the identity of 
the moral, religious, and humanitarian sentiments, and this he does 
regardless of all theoretical divergence. His congregation has a 
further advantage over that at Langham Hall, in the possession of 
a historic past, a flourishing budget, and a building adapted to the 
purpose for which it is used. And yet, if I ventured to give an 
opinion of its future, I should hesitate to affirm that its existence is 
not bound up with the life of its present minister.^ 

It is not every day, indeed, that a Moncure Conway is to be found 
to succeed a W. J. Fox, for the drawback which attaches to brilHant 
personalities is that when' they adopt neither a definite doctrine nor a 
collective organization, they at last absorb the groups of which they 
assume the direction. Mr. Conway seems to have felt this himself 
when, in a recent letter to the Boston Index^ in relation, it is true, to 
Positivism and Theism, he showed that the religious development of 
England is rather along the lines of existing Unitarianism than in any 
other direction. 

1 . Since the text of this work was written, Mr. Conway has resigned the South 
Place pulpit, but as yet (October, 1884) no successor has been appointed, though a 
gentleman is spoken of as likely to prove the elect of the congregation. — Translator. 

2. The Index, of June the 8th, 1882. 



CHAPTER VI. 



COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 



The philosophical and religious system of Auguste Comte — Worship of the Grand- 
Etre, Humanity — Organization of the Positivist priesthood — The new calendar — 
Comtism in England — Dr. Congreve and the Positivist liturgy of Chapel Street — 
The secession of 1878 — Professor Beesley, Dr. Bridges, Mr. Frederic Harrison, 
^nd the worship of Humanity at Fleur-de-Lis — The London Positivist Society — 
Sincere faith and mental discipline of the Comptists — The attempt to unite in a 
common conception the Grand -Etre of Comte with the Unknowable of Herbert 
Spencer — A religion which proscribes the religious sentiment — Meaning of Secu- 
larism — Its self-satisfied ignorance of the super-sensible — Utilitarian character of 
its morality — The National Secular Society and Mr. Bradlaugh's aggressive 
attitude — Mr. G. J. Holyoake's secession and the esta,blishment of the British 
Secular Union — Associations for the free use of the Sunday — The Secular Liturgy, 
with a Preface by Mr. Bradlaugh — Secular religious services a proof of the 
religiousness of the English mind — Conclusions suggested by the oscillations 
between faith and scepticism in England — Increasing purification of the religious 
sentiment and the gradual emancipation of Thought. 



It may have been supposed by the reader that with Mr. Conway's 
congregation we had reached the extreme limits of religious organiza- 
tions, and that beyond it there could be no possibility of worship, 
since there is no longer a recognition of the Divine existence. Still, 
if by religion we are to understand a theory of life which adopts as its 
central fact man's sense of dependence upon a Superior Being, this 
word may certainly be applied to the Worship of Humanity which has 
been established in England by Comtism, or to speak more definitely, 
by that fraction of Positivism which has remained faithful to the 
religious as well as to the philosophical doctrines of Auguste Comte. 

It was the opinion of Comte that religion alone is capable of leading 
to the predominance of altruism over egoism in the life of the indi- 
vidual : that is to say, of making social considerations more powerful 
than personal interests. To accomplish this mission, however, it was 
necessary, he held, that religion should become independent, not only 
of all supernatural beliefs, but also of all theological ideas, so that it 



130 COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 

might simply represent that condition of spiritual unity resulting from 
the convergence of all our thoughts and of all our actions towards the 
service of Humanity .^ 

Every form of religion, he remarks, comprises three essential 
elements: dogma which addresses itself to reason, worship which 
makes an appeal to sentiment, and ethical precepts which govern the 
action of the individual. In the Religion of Humanity, dogma is 
made identical with the positive philosophy, that is to say, with science 
considered as the study of law in nature, to the exclusion of first and 
final causes. As to worship or sociolatry, it is made to consist of 
homage rendered to the Grand-Etre, Humanity, in other words to the 
totality of human beings, past, present and future, with the exception 
of the mere parasites of Ufe who have not co-operated usefully in the 
world's common work, but inclusive of the useful animals, the worthy 
helpers of human life. Lastly, the ethical precepts of the Comtist 
creed constitute a collection of hygienic, moral, social and political 
prescriptions, in which its originator seems to have thrown together, 
pell-mell, ideas borrowed from all the socialist systems of the day. 
An extreme tendency to authoritative prescription prevades these 
rules of life, and the whole are cemented together by a sense of duty 
to Humanity on the one side, and by the absolute authority of the 
Positivist priesthood on the other. 

Worship is made to possess three forms : personal, domestic and 
public. Personal worship (le culte intime) is to be rendered to those 
who are related to us by blood or affection. It consists of three daily 
acts of prayer — one on rising in the mornings a second in the midst 
of our ordinary occupations, whether they are practical or theoretical, 
and the last at the approach of sleep. The first two are to take place 
before the domestic altar, instituted according to our richest memories, 
and in the attitude of veneration ; the last should be performed after 
we retire to rest and continued as far as possible till the coming on of 
sleep. To prayer there may be added the use of various accessories 
*' borrowed from the sesthetic treasures of humanity," such as songs, 
pictures and the like. 

I. Comte's religious views are to be found in his Systeme de Politiqtie Positive or 
Treatise on Sociology^ which institutes the Religion of Humanity (Paris, 1851-54), 
as well as in his Catechis?ne Positiviste or Summarized Exposition of the Universal 
Religion (Paris, 1852). 



COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 131 

Domestic worship consists of nine "social sacraments:" ist, Pre- 
sentation^ in which the child receives the name of a "theoretical" and 
also the name of a " practical " model or pattern saint — he will choose 
the "artistic" himself as he grows up; 2nd, Initiation^ at 14; 3rd, 
Admission^ at 2 1 ; 4th, Destination or the final choice of an avoca- 
tion, at 28; 5th, Marriage^ beginning at 29 with men, and at 21 for 
women — neither widows nor widowers can re-marry ) 6th, Maturity^ 
at 42, the age of complete cerebral development; 7th, Retirement 
from active life, at d-iy ; 8th, Transformation^ a sort of extreme unction 
in which the priest mingling the regrets of society with the tears of 
the family, worthily commemorates the life which is about to close ; 
and 9th, Incorporation^ seven years after death, when judgment is 
pronounced on the deceased, in conformity with the custom of ancient 
Egypt. According to the sentence thus pronounced, the remains are 
to be cast into an obscure place designed for reprobates, with the 
bodies of criminals, suicides, and duellists, or on the other hand, de- 
posited " in a sacred wood," where a simple inscription is to be placed 
on the tomb, with a bust or statue, in harmony with the degree of 
honour attained. 

Public worship is to be celebrated in churches placed among the 
tombs of the elite^ and so built that the worshippers may have their 
gaze directed towards the metropolis of the world, which "the common 
voice of the past has long identified with Paris." A woman of 30, 
holding her son in her arms is to symbolize the Grand-Etre, or Hu- 
manity. The same emblem figures upon a white and green banner, 
which is to be used in processions, and to bear on the other side the 
sacred formula of Positivism : Vivre pour autreir, Vatnour pour 
principle^ Vordre pour base, le progres pour but.^ The reader will judge 
for himself how far Professor Huxley was justified in saying that the 
Positivist faith was Catholicism minus Christianity ; to which remark 
an adherent of Comtism replied that it was Catholicism plus science. 

In addition to its religious addresses. Positivism has its various 
festivals, which bear a direct relation to its reformed calendar. This 
calendar, which is much more logical than that in common use, con- 
tains thirteen months of twenty-eight days, with a complementary day 
each year, and a second of such days in the Leap Year. Each month 

I. "We live for others: love is our principle, order our method, progress 
our aim." 



132 COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 

is divided into four weeks of seven days, and the months themselves 
are dedicated respectively to Moses, Homer, Aristotle, Archimedes, 
Caesar, St. Paul, Charlemagne, Dante, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, 
Descartes, Frederick the Second, and Bichat. The days of the week 
(Maridiy Patridi^ Filidi, Fratridi^ Domidi^ Matridi^ Hwjtanidi) have 
also names of "saints" borrowed from the list of illustrious persons 
who have rendered service to humanity. Comte modestly declined to 
inscribe his own name on the roll of the world's illustrious sons, but the 
omission has been made good by his followers, who have instituted 
festivals commemorative of his birth and death, in his old apartments, 
Rue Mons. le Prince, at Paris. It is worthy of note that though he 
has placed the names of Hercules, Haroun-al-Raschid, St. Theresa, 
Innocent the Third, and Joseph de Maistre on the roll in question, 
he has omitted the name of Christ. 

The complementary day of the calendar is designed as a universal 
festival of the dead, and the additional day of the Leap Year forms 
the festival of Reprobates, which has been specially instituted for the 
reprobation of the three principal traitors to progress, Julian the 
Apostate, Philip the Second, and Bonaparte. The Positivist era 
dates from the destruction of the Bastille in 1789, and its calendar is 
intended for use in the organization of the concrete worship of 
Humanity ; that is to say, in the worship of the Grand-Etre, adored 
in the person of a few individuals who are worthy of being regarded 
as typical of the best in humanity. But, in addition to this, an 
abstract form of worship is instituted, in which the worshipper no 
longer bows before this or that historical personage, but before some 
form of human relationship, such as marriage, paternity, woman's 
character and influence, the priesthood, and the like. 

The most original and perhaps the most severely criticised feature 
of the Comtist system, is its conception of a priesthood which forms 
a true theocracy without a Theos. No order of society, says Comte, 
can be maintained and developed without some kind of priesthood. 
Hence he advocates the desirability of three orders of clergy, at the 
rate of one *' spiritual functionary" for every 6000 persons. This 
priesthood, sovereignly directed by a High-Priest of Humanity resident 
at Paris, would have the exclusive charge of education, of developing 
"the higher branches of theorectical science, of cultivating poetry 
and practicing medicine, and lastly of giving a moral tone to the 



COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 133 

government of the Western Republic, which will be concentrated in 
the hands of some few bankers ! 

Anyone who knew Comte simply by this exposition of his social and 
religious system, would be tempted to see in it, either a Utopia 
deliberately devised by some wit, or else a scheme which originated 
among the lunatics at Charenton. And yet, to-day, some twenty-five 
years after the death of its author, the Comptist system is fully ac- 
cepted by groups of intelligent and sincere men in France, England, 
Ireland, Sweden, the United States, Brazil, &c. Among its adherents, 
in England more especially, there are men who occupy the front rank 
in the intellectual aristocracy of the country. Certainly Comte him- 
self was anything but a visionary or an impostor ; and no one can 
study his modest and laborious life without feeling a genuine esteem 
for him as a thinker of the first order, who in spite of his caprices and 
oddities was capable of exercising a complete fascination upon those 
who surrounded him. Besides, if the philosophical principles of 
Positivism are accepted, its religious doctrines appear far less arbitrary 
and strange than at first sight one is apt to suppose them. 

England early showed a willingness to accept the religious as weM 
as the philosophical doctrines of Positivism. It is true, Stuart Mill 
rejected the former, and that he slightly modified even the latter in 
order to adapt them to English ideas. Still others accepted the 
system of the French philosopher in its entirety, and among them were 
Dr. Richard Congreve, an Oxford Professor, and Dr. Bridges, the 
Inspector-General of Manufactures. On the death of Comte, in 1857, 
when his executors had accepted Mons. P. Lafitte as their leader ad 
interim. Dr. Congreve, who was placed at th^ head of the English 
branch of the Positivist Church, drew together its London adherents 
into a building in Chapel Street, where he gradually organised the 
Worship of Humanity. This "Church," which I visited in 1875, 
resembles an ordinary Dissenting place of worship, and the visitor 
might take it for such, were it not for the presence on its walls of 
thirteen plaster casts of those who have given their names to the 
months of the calendar. The service, which at present takes place 
every Sunday, consists of hymns, pieces of music, readings, and a 
sermon or lecture, with prayers to the Grand-Etre, as well as thanks- 
givings addressed to the most meritorious types of humanity. 



134 COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 

Here is a summary of the curious liturgy which Dr. Congreve has 
composed for the celebration of the festival of Humanity, which is 
fixed for the first of January by the^ Comtist Calendar. The ceremony 
begins by an invocation : that is to say, by the reading of the sacred 
formulary I have already mentioned. Then follows a reading from 
the Iviitation^ after which comes a collect, in which the officiating 
minister addresses himself directly to humanity in these terms : — 
"Thou Power Supreme, who hast hitherto guided thy children under 
other names, but in this generation hast come to thy own in thy own 
proper person, revealed for all ages to come by thy servant Auguste 
Comte, we praise thee," &c. (The Religion of Humanity^ page 2.) 

After this collect, the following dialogue in relation to humanity 
takes place between minister and congregation : — 

Priest — We bow before thee in thankfulness, 

People — As children of thy past. 

Priest — We adore thee in hope, 

People — As thy ministers and stewards for the future. 

-Priest — We would commune with thee humbly in prayer, 

People — As thy servants in the present. 

All — May our worship, as our lives, grow more and more worthy 
of thy great name. 

The sermon being over and another prayer having been said, the 
service is brought to a close by the following benediction ; " The 
Faith of Humanity, the Hope of Humanity, the Love of Humanity, 
bring you comfort and teach you sympathy, give you peace in your- 
selves and peace with others now and for ever.— ^;;z^;2.'' This liturgy, 
as the reader will have seen, draws largely upon the spirit and even 
the text of the hnitation^- 

Here again is the text, from the same manual, of a collect for St. 

I. Thomas a Kempis is in great favour among the orthodox disciples of Comte, 
who have strongly recommended the use of the Imitation as a manual of piety and 
holiness of universal acceptance, on condition, of course, that Humanity be substi- 
tuted for God, the social type for the personal type in Jesus, our spiritual progress 
for the rewards of a future life, our social instincts for grace, and our selfish instincts 
for nature. "So used," says Dr. Congreve, in his little manual. The Religion oj- 
Humanity, "its lessons of devotion and humility, of intimate communion with the 
type we adore, of unceasing moral culture, of self-denying service, of the service not 
of ourselves, but of others, are not the less available because they are clothed in 
the language of an older faith and sanctioned by the experience of many generations 
of faithful and devout men." 



COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 135 

Francis of Assisi, whose festival or day of commemoration occurs on 
the twentieth of Charlemagne in the Comtist calendar (7th of July) : — 
" In another time and with another belief, we, who on this day 
reverently honour the memory of this eminent saint of the older dis- 
pensation, St. Francis of Assisi, pray that his example may not be 
lost upon us, but that his seraphic love for the object of his devotion 
may teach us a like love for the suffering and wounded Humanity 
whom we preach and serve, that in the force of that love we may 
catch some portion of this saint's great humility, of the richness of his 
spirit of renunciation, of his unbounded simple affection for all his 
fellow men, for all living beings, for all outward objects; lastly of his 
patient and loving resignation — So by our lives glorifying our service 
as he glorified his ; so spreading, as he spread his faith ; the nobler 
and more enduring faith into which that of Medaeeval Europe has in 
our times been transfigured." 

I shall close these extracts by the reproduction of the prayer which 
Dr. Congreve has drawn up for the sacrament of the presentation 
of children : — 

" Grand Power whom we adore as the source of all good to men, 
Humanity; we thy servants, met for the consecration of a new life to thy 
service, humbly and earnestly pray that the child by this sacrament pre- 
sented and consecrated may be lovingly, faithfully, and wisely trained; 
that under all wholesome influences of affection, and submission, 
and reverence he may grow up to be in his turn rich in such influences 
for others, taking his part in thy continuous work. We pray, more- 
over for ourselves, that whatever our share in this celebration, we may 
all alike use it rightly to re-kindle our devotion, and as an occasion 
for renewing our dedication of ourselves to thee ; that it may leave us 
at once humbler and better — humbler from the sense of our great 
shortcomings, better by the resolve to use more carefully the oppor- 
tunity still left us for improvement, self-sacrifice for others, zeal and 
activity in thy cause — so glorifying thee for thy past and preparing for 
thy more glorious future. — Amen^ 

The early stages of the Positivist church were attended with con- 
siderable difficulty. Some dozen years ago an able writer, Mr. Mark 
Pattison, being questioned as to what he had seen on a certain occa- 
sion at the Comtist chapel, replied that he had found there three 



136 COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 

persons, but no God. Positivism, it is true, has always forbidden all 
inconsiderate proselytism, which explains both the smallness of its 
numbers and the distinguished character of its adherents. To speak 
merely of London, we may mention as among its principal champions 
to-day, one of the most brilliant essayists in England, Mr. Frederic 
Harrison, whose name is familiar to the readers of the great English 
reviews; Professor Beesley, of University Hall; Mr. James Cotter 
Moi-rison, one of the staff of the Fortnightly Review^ and Mr. Henry 
Crompton, a barrister of ability and an energetic champion of the 
interests of working men, — not to speak of others, whose names may 
be found on the list of weekly lectures arranged for by the Positivists 
in their chapels. In addition to the London centres of the Positivist 
faith, others have been established during recent years at Dublin, 
Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, and Newcastle. 

It is to be remarked that a secession took place in the Church of 
Humanity in 1878, which threatened for a moment the unity of 
Comtism, but which was at last reduced, at least as regards England, 
to a simple personal difference. Dr. Congreve having at this time, 
together with several of his French co-religionists, rejected the 
authority of M. Laptte, whom he charged with making too much of 
teaching and too little of preaching,^ the most eminent English 
Positivists refused to follow their compatriot in this matter; and hence 
they formed at Newton Hall, an old Scottish Chapel in Fetter Lane, 
a new branch of the Church of Humanity, which M. Lafitte came 
over to solemnly consecrate in 1881. Weekly meetings are held there, 
the festivals of Humanity being observed and the sacraments ad- 
ministered exactly as at Chapel Street. The only difference consists 
in a greater simplicity of ritual. But it is probable that this will be- 
come more elaborate with the lapse of time. We shall perhaps have 
to wait for — said Mr. Harrison on the ist of January, 1880, on the 
occasion of the fete of Humanity — " the due commemoration of this 
day ; the full embodiment of all those thoughts, feelings, resolves that 
come to us at the opening of one year more, may not be yet. Our 
meagre expressions are such as belong to the difficulties of a small 
beginning. We believe, as much as the adherents of any faith, that 

I. Comte himself distinguished between the functions of the apostle and those 
of the priest. The latter should address himself exclusively to minds imbued with 
Positive teaching, the former ought to make a direct appeal to the sentiments of the 
masses. 



COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 137 

a truly religious sense of duty in men and women gathered together 
in common convictions and with joint purpose, will ere long issue in 
enthusiastic appeals to the noblest of all the human feelings, with all 
the resources of art and poetry.^ 

The Positivists of Newton Hall have organised an entire system of 
instruction, which they have gratuitously placed at the disposal of the 
public, and which has been wholly arranged according to the scheme 
of education devised by Comte. The meetings of the " London 
Positivist Society" are held in the same hall. This society is under 
the presidency of Mr. Harrison, and it aims at influencing public 
opinion, with a view to promote the moral and social doctrines en- 
joined by Positivism. It is this organization which has given utterance 
during recent years to the most vehement protestations against the 
war in Afghanistan, the annexation of the Transvaal, the policy of 
coercion in Ireland and the Egyptian expedition. 

At a period in which the great majority of men are in doubt about 
everything and often of themselves too, the orthodox Positivists 
possess a faith whose comprehensiveness and ardour, are a source of 
moral restfulness and intellectual pleasure. In their opinion Auguste 
Comte truly revealed to the world the last word of method, if not of 
truth, and there is not perhaps a single Comtist who has ever allowed 
himself to criticise the least important assertion of his master, except 
to interpret or complete its significance. In all this, there is doubtless 
evidence of a re-action against the intellectual anarchy through which 
modern society is struggling; but this rare instance of mental dis- 
cipline is none the less strange when we bear in mind the superiority 
of the men by whom it has been freely adopted. 

It is to be noted that the Comtists profess the most unswerving 
confidence in the full and final triumph of their faith; the only 
question of which they are in doubt is whether this triumph will take 
place early enough to save European civilization from the destruction 
which, as they think, the Religion of Humanity can alone prevent. 
*' There is a great and terrible uncertainty hanging over the immediate 
destinies of the West," said Professor Beesley, at the festival of 
Humanity, on the ist of January, 1881. Will the diffusion of 
Positivist ideas among a sufificient number of good people be accom- 

I. Frederic Harrison, The Present and the Future; a Positivist Address. 
London, 1880. 



138 COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 

plished in time to arrest the forces which are hurrying Europe towards 
anarchy, or will the disorganization be upon us before the only re- 
organizing doctrine has been able to make itself sufficiently known, 
or has leavened the mass outside of a few scattered groups ? " It is 
thus that the early Christians were constrained to speak when they saw 
the approaching ruin of the Roman world, which is symbolized by the 
visions of the Apocalypse. 

Positivists of the Stuart Mill type are at present rare in England, 
and the school of Littre is perhaps still less represented there. All 
those who have not accepted Comte's system in its entirety appear to 
have been drawn into the vortex of evolution. Hence orthodox 
Positivists are not sparing in their condemnation of the writings of 
Herbert Spencer, whom they charge, not only with mistaking the value 
of the scientific classification established by Comte, but also with 
exceeding the limits of observation by affirming the reality of the 
Unknowable, as well as with promoting moral anarchy by disregard- 
ing the necessity of an appeal to sentiment in order to ensure the 
predominance of the Altruistic over the selfish impulses in the indi- 
vidual. It is notorious, indeed, that Spencer in his system of ethics, 
claims that the happiness of the community flows out of the happiness 
of the individual, and that he sees in the latter the direct or indirect 
source of all our actions ; whence the conclusion that duty is an illu- 
sion and the spirit of sacrifice a mere phantom of the imagination. 
The Positivists, on the other hand, regard the happiness of others as 
the first consideration, while the happiness of the individual is, in 
their opinion, only a consequence or corollary of this. No one has, 
perhaps, seen more clearly than Mr. Harrison has done the weakness 
of the evolutionary philosophy, regarded in its ethical bearings. " A 
Power," says he,^ " which is to comfort us, control us, unite us, and a 
Power that is to have any religious effect on us, must comfort, control, 

I. Pantheism and Cosmic Emotion, in the XIX. Century, of August, i88l. — 
Among the Positivists of the Continent and specially those of the school of Littre, 
Mr. Spencer's Philosophy is treated still more severely. Ten years after the publi- 
cation of the article in v/hich M. Laugel said of Spencer in the Revue des 
Deux Mondes, that he vi^as condemning himself to poverty and obscurity from his 
devotion to speculations of an unpopular kind, the Revue Positive, of Paris, charged 
him *' with having turned his back on the immortal Stuart Mill to sacrifice to the 
golden calf, the source of all popularity, in company with Darwin, Lubbock, 
Tyndall and Huxley." (Le Transformisme devant le Positivisme, in the Revue 
Positive for January and February, 1875). 



COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 13^ 

unite, — must be a Power that we conceive as akin to our human 
souls j a moral power, not a physical Power ; a sympathetic, active^ 
living Power, not a group of phenomena or a law of matter. You 
might as well tell a mother to bring up her child on the binomial 
theorem."! 

I. Some reference to the controversy on this subject, which was carried on in the 
pages of the XIX. Century during 1884, between Mr. Spencer and Mr. Harrison, 
will not be deemed out of place here. It originated in an Article which the former 
published in the January number of the Review, with the title, — " Religion : A 
Retrospect and a Prospect." He begins this article by stating that, " Unlike the 
ordinary consciousness, the religious consciousness is concerned with that which lies 
beyond the sphere of sense. " He then shows, or attempts to show, that the " ghost- 
theory," with its "other self, supposed to wander in dreams," illustrates and explains 
the origin of this consciousness. And he adds, — "Thus, recognising the fact that 
in the primitive human mind there exists neither religious idea nor religious senti- 
ment, we find that in the course of social evolution and the evolution of intelligence 
accompanying it, there are generated both the ideas and sentiments which we dis- 
tinguish as religious ; and that through a process of causation, clearly traceable, 
they traverse those stages which have brought them, among civilized races, to their 
present form." But, continues Mr. Spencer, it may be objected "The ghost-theory 
of the savage is baseless. The material double of a dead man, in which he believes, 
never had any existence. And if by a gradual de-materialisation of this double was 
produced the conception of the supernatural agent in general — if the conception of 
a Deity, formed by the dropping of some human attributes and transfiguration of 
others, resulted from continuance of this process, is not the developed and purified 
conception, reached by pushing the process to its limit, a fiction also ? Surely if 
the primitive belief was absolutely false, all derived beliefs must be absolutely false. 
This objection looks fatal, and it would be fatal were its premiss valid. Unexpected 
as it will be to most readers, the answer here to be made is that at the outset a germ 
of truth was contained in the primitive conception — the truth, namely, that the 
power which manifests itself in consciousness is but a differently-conditioned form 
of the power which manifests itself beyond consciousness." . . . See now the 
implications. That internal energy which in the experiences of the primitive man 
was always the immediate antecedent of changes wrought by him — that energy 
which, when interpreting external changes, he thought of along with those attributes 
of a human personality connected with it in himself, is the same energy which, freed 
from anthropomorphic accompaniments, is now figured as the cause of all external 
phenomena. The last stage reached is recognition of the truth that force as it 
exists beyond consciousness cannot be like what we know as force within conscious- 
ness ; and that yet, as either is capable of generating the other, they must be 
different modes of the same. Consequently, the final outcome of that speculation 
commenced by the primitive man, is that the Power manifested throughout the 
Universe distinguished as material, is the same power which in ourselves wells up 
under the form of consciousness," 

It will seem to most readers that these thoughts are not only sublime in their 
suggestiveness, but that they disclose the most solid of all foundations for the 
religious sentiment— nature itself. Anyhow, Mr. Spencer goes on to say as to the 
result of science in its bearing on religion, — "Those who think that science is dis- 
sipating religious beliefs and sentiments seem unaware that whatever of mystery is 



140 COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 

I must not omit to mention an attempt which has been made to 
unite the Unknowable of Herbert Spencer with the Grand-Etre of 
Comte, in a common religious conception. For although it is 
Mr. William Frey, an American Positivist, to whom this attempt is 
due, I consider it desirable to give an exposition of his views in this 
chapter, because no better conclusion could be found for what I have 
advanced respecting the general character of Positivism and its special 
development as a system of faith and worship. 

In a paper published in the Index, of the 3rd of August, 1882, 
Mr. Frey showed, with great power of reasoning and a truly compre- 

taken from the old interpretation is added to the new. . . . Under one of its 
aspects scientific progress is a gradual transfiguration of Nature. Where ordinary 
perception saw perfect simplicity it reveals great complexity ; where there seemed 
absolute inertness it discloses intense activity ; and in what appears mere vacancy 
it finds a marvellous play of forces. . . . When the explorer of Nature sees 
that, quiescent as they appear, surrounding solid bodies are sensitive to forces which 
are infinitesimal in their amounts — when the spectroscope proves to him that 
molecules on the earth pulsate in harmony with molecules in the stars — when there 
is forced on him the inference that every point in space thrills with an infinity of 
vibrations passing through it in all directions ; the conception to which he tends is 
much less that of a Universe of dead matter than that of a Universe everwhere 
alive — alive if not in the restricted sense still in a general sense. This transfigura- 
tion, which the inquiries of physicists continually increase, is aided by that other 
transfiguration resulting from metaphysical inquiries. Subjective analysis compels 
us to admit that our scientific interpretations of the phenomena which objects pre- 
sent are expressed in terms of our own variously-combined sensations and ideas- 
are expressed, that is, in elements belonging to consciousness, which are but symbols 
•of the something beyond consciousness. Though analysis afterwards reinstates our 
primitive beliefs, to the extent of showing that behind every group of phenomenal 
manifestations there is always a nexus, which is the reality that remains fixed amid 
appearances which are variable, yet we are shown that this nexus of reality is for 
ever inaccessible to consciousness. And when once more we remember that the 
activities constituting consciousness, being rigorously bounded, cannot bring in 
among themselves the activities beyond the bounds, which therefore seem uncon- 
scious, though production of either by the other seems to imply that they are of the 
same essential nature ; this necessity we are under to think of the external energy in 
terms of the internal energy gives rather a spiritualistic than a materialistic aspect 
to the Universe : further thought, however, obliging us to recognise the truth that 
a conception given in phenomenal manifestations of this ultimate energy can in no 
wise show us what it is. . . . Amid the mysteries which become the more 
mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute cer- 
tainty that he (the thinker of the future) is ever in presence of an Infinite and 
Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed." 

Now there is much in the foregoing passages, to say nothing of other parts of the 
Article, which could not fail to rouse the hostility of an orthodox Positivist, and 
no one acquainted with Mr. Frederic Harrison's brilliant controversial talents, can 
have been surprised when two months later he joined issue ''with the acknowledged 



COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 141 

hensive range of thought, that the principal source of our religious 
sentiments is to be traced to a sense of dependence upon the universe. 
But man has always sought to represent, under concrete and tangible 
human forms, the mysterious Power upon which he feels dependent. 
And although the idea of the Infinite, as Mr. Spencer shows, has been 
gradually freed from all its anthropomorphic attributes and transformed 
into the indeterminate conception of the Unknowable, it is to be borne 
in mind that the importance of the human element in the object of 
worship has not only suffered no diminution, but has even been in- 
creased in proportion as the conception of the Divinity has become 

head of the Evolution philosophy," to use his own words. And in order to make 
his attack all the more formidable, as it would seem, he began by praising his oppo- 
nent who had uttered ** the last word of the Agnostic philosophy in its long contro- 
versy with theology," and in so conclusive a manner that it was "hard to conceive" 
how theology could ''rally for another bout." But the essay, he said, which was 
"packed with thought to a degree unusual even with Mr. Herbert Spencer," dealt 
rather with the *' Ghost of Religion" than with ** Religion" itself. It was divisible, 
he added, into three parts, the third of which "deals with the evolution of religion 
in the future, and formulates, more precisely than has ever yet been effected, the 
positive creed of Agnostic philosophy." 

"Has, then, the Agnostic a positive creed, he asks? It would seem so; for Mr. 
Spencer brings us at last ' to the one absolute certainty, the presence of an Infinite 
and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed.' But let no one suppose that 
this is merely a new name for the Great First Cause of so many theologies and 
metaphysics. In spite of the capital letters, and the use of theological terms as 
old as Isaiah or Athanasius, Mr. Spencer's Energy has no analogy with God. It 
is Eternal, Infinite and Incomprehensible ; but still it is not He, but It. It remains 
always Energy, Force, nothing anthropomorphic ; such as electricity, or anything 
else that we might conceive as the ultimate basis of all the physical forces. None 
of the positive attributes which have ever been predicated of God, can be used of 

this Energy It shares some of the negative attributes of God and 

First Cause, but no positive one. It is, in fact, only the Unknowable a little more 
defined ; though I do not remember that Mr. Spencer, or any Evolution philosopher, 
has ever formulated the Unknowable in terms with so deep a theological ring as we 
hear in the phrase ' Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed. ' " 

Clearly the sting of Mr. Spencer's article lay in these words — in the differentia- 
tion of the Ultimate "Energy" from the "all things" proceeding from it, which 
they imply. But Mr. Harrison continues: "Agnosticism, perfectly legitimate as 
the true answer of science to an effete question, has shown us that religion is not to 
be found anywhere within the realm of Cause. Having brought us to the answer, 
* no cause that we know of,' it is laughable to call that negation religion. Mr. 
Mark Pattison, one of the acutest minds of modern Oxford, rather oddly says that 
the idea of Deity has been ' defecated to a pure transparency.' The evolution 
philosophy goes a step further and defecates the idea of Cause to a pure transpar- 
ency. Theology and ontology alike end in the everlasting No, with which science 
confronts all their assertions. But how whimsical is it to tell us that religion, which 
cannot find any resting place in theology or ontology, is to find its true home in the 



142 COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 

more vague; men have simply endowed their fellows with the attributes 
stripped from the Unknowable, as the formation and development 
of the most recent great religions attest. 

Mr. Spencer admits the necessity of representing the Infinite by 
some concrete symbolism ; all that he asks is that the symbols made 
use of shall be regarded as possessed of no resemblance whatever to 
the Reality for which they stand. "But," asks Mr. Frey, "what 
symbol of this nature is susceptible of awakening in us the sympathies 
which play so preponderating a part in the complex character of the 
religious sentiment ? This inscrutable Power, stern, inflexible in its 
mysterious way, requiring a complete submission to its will, punishing 

Everlasting No. That which is defecated to a pure transparency can never supply 
a religion to any human being but a philosopher constructing a system. It is quite 
conceivable that religion is to end with theology, and both might in the course of 
evolution become an anachronism. But if religion there is still to be, it cannot be 
found in this No-man's-land and Know-nothing creed. Better bury religion at once 
than let its ghost walk uneasy in our dreams Mr. Spencer has un- 
wittingly conceded to the divines that which they assume so confidently — that 
theology is the same thing as religion, and that there was no religion at all until 
there was a belief in superhuman spirits within and behind nature. This is 
obviously an oversight. We have to go very much further back for the genesis of 
religion. There were countless centuries of Time, and there were and there are 
countless millions of men for whom no doctrine of superhuman spirits ever took 
coherent form. In all these ages and races, probably by far the most numerous that ' 
our planet has witnessed, there was religion in all kinds of definite form. Comte 
calls it Fetichism — terms are not important : roughly we may call it Nature-worship. 
The religion in all these types was the belief and worship not of spirits of any kind, 
not of any immaterial, imagined being inside things, but of the actual visible 
things themselves — trees, stones, rivers, mountains, earth, fire, stars, sun and sky." 

Then again as to the "Unknowable," Mr. Harrison says: "As the universal 
substratum it has some analogy with other superhuman objects of worship. But 
Force, Gravitation, Atom, Undulation, Vibration and other abstract notions have 
much the same kind of analogy, but nobody ever dreamed of a religion of gravita- 
tion or the worship of molecules It would be hardly sane to make a 

religion of the Equator or the Binomial theorem But to make a re- 
ligion out of the Unknowable is far more extravagant than to make it out of the 

Equator I suppose Dean Mansel's Bampton Lectures touched the 

low-water mark of vitality as predecated of the Divine Being. Of all modern 
theologians the Dean came the nearest to the Evolution negation. But there is a 
gulf which separates even his all-negative Deity from Mr. Spencer's impersonal, 

unconscious, unthinking and unthinkable Energy One would like to 

know how much of the Evolutionist's day is consecrated to seeking the Unknow- 
able in a devout way, and what the religious exercises might be. How does the 
man of science approach the All-Nothingness? .... Imagine a religion 
which excludes the idea of worship, because its sole dogma is the infinity of 
Nothingness. Although the Unknowable is logically said to be something, yet the 
something of which we neither know nor conceive anything is practically nothing. 



COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 143 

every transgression of its laws, may be compared with an autocrat who 
shows no partiality, puts everybody on the same footing, and inflicts 
the same punishment on his best subject as on the meanest. Such a 
Power may enforce humility, terror, and awe — the very same feelings 
which were so prominent among primitive men — but never excite the 
sympathetic feeling. Children may love the parent only when con- 
scious of being loved and protected by him during their helplessness 
and in time of trouble. The cold, stony-hearted, immovable Power 
of Agnostics cannot excite in man the feelings of love, self-sacrifice, 
and devotion." It is not sufficient, adds Mr. Frey, to possess an 
acquaintance with the laws of nature ; we need also a stimulus, which 
shall impel us to act in conformity with their requirements and serve 
as a guide just where science ceases to do this. The most selfish 
man, for instance, may unhesitatingly accept all the deductions of 
Herbert Spencer without becoming the better for it. Even more, he 

. , . . There is one symbol of the infinite Unknowable, and it is perhaps the 
most definite and ultimate word that can be said about it. The precise and yet in- 
exhaustible language of mathematics enables us to express, in a common algebraic 
formula, the exact combination of the Unknown raised to its highest power of 
infinity. That formula is (x"), and here we have the beginning and perhaps 
the end of a symbolism of the religion of the infinite Unknowable. Schools, 
academies, temples of the Unknowable, there cannot be. But where two or three 
are gathered together to worship the Unknowable, there the algebraic formula may 
suffice to give form to their emotions : they may be heard to profess their unweary- 
ing belief in (x^^), even if no weak brother with ritualistic tendencies be heard 
to cry, ' O (j;")> love us, help us, make us one with thee ! ' " 

Now it need hardly be said, by way of concluding this long note, that Mr. 
Harrison in speaking of the " Unknowable " as the " All-Nothingness," completely 
misunderstands or perverts his opponent's teaching, and this the latter had no 
difficulty in showing, while in his first reply he dealt, moreover, a rude thrust at the 
so-called " Religion of Humanity," and completely negatived the assertion that 
the earliest form of worship was directed to natural objects /<fr sg " without trace 
of ghost, spirit or god. " Suffice it to add that the controversy consisted of three 
articles from Mr. Spencer and two from Mr. Harrison, while the Rev. Canon 
Curteis and Sir James Stephen also took part in it from their respective stand- 
points. The author of this work too published an excellent article on the contro- 
versy in the Revue de PHistoire des Religions, in which he shows that ' ' the 
conditions indispensible to becoming the object of a religion are found in the 
Unknowable, as well as in the Eternal, the Absolute, the Self-Existent, the Most 
High, the Only Pure or whatever other qualifications men may have made the 
equivalent of the divine," and that " before becoming the scientific faith of Spencer, 
Huxley, and even Haekel, this religious conception has sufficed for men of the 
highest order of mind and of the most religious susceptibilities, such as Giordano, 
Bruno, Spinoza, Kant, Goethe, Shelley, Wordsworth, Carlyle, Emerson, and even 
M. Renan." — Translator. 



144 COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 

will possibly find in the ultimate axioms of science, relative to the 
struggle for life and the survival of the fittest, an excuse for acts most 
at variance with the claims of justice and humanity. 

Happily, whatever incompleteness or even pernicious tendency there 
may be in this conception, it is capable of being supplemented or cor-^ 
rected by the great discovery of Comte, that, between man and the 
universe there exists humanity. " We see in humanity a source of all our 
blessings, because from her we obtain our knowledge and inspirations > 
only by and with her can we live and perfect ourselves. And as our 
material bodies which are fed upon the earth, do not perish, but return 
to the earth and live for ever with it, so our achievements, activities, 
and influences which are obtained from humanity do not perish, but. 
return back to humanity, and live for ever with her, having their share 
in her future development. Viewed in such a light, humanity ceases 
to be our master only ; it becomes our protector and comforter also. 
And the sense of gratitude, combined with the sense of duty, compels 
us to pledge our life to its improvement and perfection." 

The conception of humanity as a living organism, continues Mr. 
Frey, gives us a key for the most difficult moral problems. It explains- 
why man cannot attain to true happiness if he does not live for others. 
It lays the foundations of morality, moreover, neither in the freedom 
of the Will, nor in a fatalistic conception, but in the instinct of preser- 
vation, which belongs to Humanity as well as to every individual 
organism. Frorn a religious point of view it cannot fail to call forth, 
in the highest degree, all the good effects which were brought about 
by the human element in the old religions. — " If more than a third of 
the human race prostrates itself, if millions of Christians worship a 
good man hanged as a criminal, if a still greater number of Mussul- 
mans get their insphration from Mohammed, well may we bow in 
admiration and love before Humanity as a galaxy of all great men 
and all noble thought and actions which ever stirred the human soul." 

Does it follow that in imitation of certain Positivists who are da^led 
by the grandeur of this discovery, we should try fo put Humanity in 
the place of God ? In relation to this question, Herbert Spencer has 
justly said — "No such thing as humanity can ever do more than 
temporarily shut out the thought of a Power of which Humanity is 
but a small and fugitive product — a Power which was in course of 
ever-changing manifestations long before humanity, and will continue 



COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 145 

through other manifestations when humanity has ceased to be." (Study 
of Sociology, p. 312.) Mr. Frey yields therefore to the necessity of 
admitting both the existence of the Unknowable and our dependence 
upon that mysterious Power, as well as our inability to fathom its 
inscrutable nature. — " We differ from the pure Agnostics of Herbert 
Spencer's stamp, only when we come to the solution of a burning 
question which always was pre-eminent in every religion : Who will 
reveal to us the laws of nature, who will be our Saviour ?" — Science, 
answer the Agnostics, who thus restrict religion to its element of 
mystery. — No, says Mr. Frey, it must be a concrete, living, superior 
being which represents the human element of religion in the purest 
and loftiest manner : " The blank left in our souls by the omission of 
a personal God is filled now by the image of Humanity as our pro- 
tecting and guiding father. We worship humanity as the mediator 
between man and the Infinite for all ages to come, and, in serving 
humanity, we have all that is needed to unite persons of the most 
diversified taste, temperaments, and dispositions into one religious 
brotherhood." 

It is clear the Agnostic can feel no scruple in accepting a form of 
faith thus understood, since humanity is not a product of the imagi- 
nation, but a fact verifiable by science. On the other hand, what 
objection could be urged against this conception, by Positivists, who 
address their worship to humanity, without taking into account the 
element of m3'stery in religion ? " The intense feeling of gratitude 
and adoration which they feel toward humanity will become only 
deeper and stronger if humanity be regarded as mediator between 
man and the Infinite, because then will come into play the strongest 
chord of rehgious sentiment — i.e.^ man's yearning for the Infinite. In 
humanity, then, we shall see not only a being imposing in itself, but, 
for us, the only conceivable image of the Infinite, and the laws of 
morality, which we derive from our relation to humanity, become a 
reflection of the supreme laws of the universe, which all must obey 
who wish to escape punishment." 

In these views, it is urged, there will be found a point of contact 
between the schools of both Herbert Spencer and Auguste Comte, 
and the group of thinkers who claim that a philosophy of life is to be 
found in the guidance of the individual conscience. "That which 
these Moralists regard as philosophy is but the promptings of their 

L 



146 COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 

noble souls. They mistake in the supposition that every man can 
obey the dictates of inner nature just as easily as they do, or that he 
will follow the same direction of activity which they choose. They 
forget that the moral nature of every man is tinged by one or another 
of evil propensities which he inherits together with the good ones ; 
and when he attempts to arrive at some definite conclusion by the 
dictates of his soul, he unconsciously becomes the victim of his 
inclination. It is not enough to awake a man from spiritual slumber : 
it is necessary to keep before him a certain standard of moraUty, so 
as to enable him to educate his conscience before he will consult it." 
Doubtless, many men unconsciously perform their duty towards the 
Grand-Etre by doing good, instead of merely preaching it. The 
acceptance of the views which Mr. Frey advocates will make no 
change in the conduct of such persons ; it will simply give them a 
new impelling motive, and secure for them an irresistible ascendancy, 
by adding the attraction of a solid, rational and ennobling philosophy 
to the charm of natural goodness. 

" In conclusion," says Mr. Frey, " the Religion of Humanity is the 
only form of Agnosticism which can stand the severest tests of sceptics 
and is able to continue the mission performed by the past religions. 
Let us not be afraid to indorse it. It will for ever remain an embodi- 
ment of progress, because, being based on science, it has no stationary 
dogmas which may be outgrown in the future. The Religion of 
Humanity is the only safe anchorage for those who are tired both of 
the metaphysical rambles of idealists and of the sophistical arguments 
of the selfish. Under its banner will come all who are in search of 
true religion, all who are craving for spiritual food, all who find in 
their experiences how futile are the best planned reforms if not illu- 
minated and sanctified by the religious sentiment." 

It simply remains to express the opinion that if the Religion of 
Humanity is destined to extend, it will be in the form indicated by 
Mr. Frey. Even now, indeed — except as regards the Comtist ritual 
— it is the form of faith, at once practical and elevated, which is taught 
by Mr. Conway and by a certain number of Unitarian ministers. As 
presented by the American Positivist, it answers to a double tendency 
of the modern mind : An aspiration, on the one hand, towards 
some certainty able to close the era of metaphysical controversy; 
and, on the other, a desire to direct religious activity into channels 



COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 147 

where it will tend to the individual and social amelioration of the 
human race. 

Having previously considered a form of worship which makes belief 
in God optional, we have just discussed the claims of another system 
of religion, which suppresses it in the most formal manner. Here we 
come to a third, — if religion it may be called — which goes so far as 
to proscribe even religious sentiment itself. I refer to Secularism, 
which has, it is true, provided itself with a liturgy for use in all the 
solemn circumstances of life, but which abstains from seeking its 
support or leverage in sentiment, that is to say, in those emotional 
faculties to which the Positivists themselves turn as the essential 
element of religion. 

The aim of Secularism is to concentrate the activity of man upon 
the concerns of the present life, which are under the control of experi- 
ence. It starts from the principle that we can know nothing about 
the existence of God and the reality of a future life ; and it refuses, 
therefore, to concern itself with such questions either by way of affir- 
mation or denial. The purpose which it assigns to life is the realiza- 
tion of individual happiness, which it does not, however, separate 
from the happiness of all. But this double result can only be attained 
by human efforts, based upon science and experience. Hence it 
claims, in the first place, the most absolute freedom of thought, and 
in the second, the right to use this freedom in the search for truth, 
within the sphere of sensible observation. Every speculation which 
tends to draw the mind from this ground, it deems idle and therefore 
mischievous.^ 

I. It may be readily conceded that Secularism possesses a noble aim, and this 
aim is, in some cases, a purifying fire and a source of divinest strength. Here, for 
instance, is a fine passage from a work entitled, Secularism in its Various Relations^ 
which, though published anonymously in the Secular Reviexv, was written by the 
late James Thomson, a poet of no mean gifts — at least in the opinion of George 
Eliot. Speaking of the happiness Secularism aims at, the writer says: — "This 
happiness implies, firstly, material well-being, sufficiency of food, clothing and 
house-room, with good air, good water, and good sanitary conditions ; for these things 
are necessary to bodily health, and this is essential to the health of the mind : and 
only in health is real happiness possible. Again, it implies mental well-being, 
sufficiency of instruction and education for every one, so that his intellect may be 
nourished and developed to the full extent of its capabilities. Given the sound 
mind in the sound body, it further implies free exercise of these — absolutely free in 
every respect, so long as it does not trench on the equal rights of others or impede 
the common good. In this full development of mind as well as body, it need 



148 COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 

This essentially utilitarian doctrine is found, above all as a tendency, 
in the majority of contemporary nations. But it is only in England, 
so far as I know, that there has been any attempt to make a religion 
of it. It was the two brothers Austin and G. J. Holyoake who gave 
an organized form to Secularism about the year 1 846, by founding the 
National Secular Society, which was intended to become a centre of 
activity and propagandism. But this Association became at last so 
mixed up with the anti-theological, political, and social struggles of 
the noted agitator Mr. Bradlaugh, the editor of its organ, The NatioJial 
Reformer^ that after the death of Mr. Austin Holyoake in 1874, the 
foremost leaders of the Secular movement set about the formation of 
a rival society, the British Secular Unio?i, on the following basis : — • 

" I. — Principles. 
" I. That the present life being the only one of which we have certain 

knowledge, its concerns claim our primary attention. 
" 2. That the promotion of our individual and of the general well- 
being in this world is at once our highest wisdom and duty. 
" 3. That the only means upon which we can rely for the accomplish- 
ment of this object is human effort, based upon knowledge and 
experience. 
"4. We judge conduct by its issues in this world only. What con- 
duces to the general well-being is right ; what has the opposite 
tendency is wrong. 

scarcely be said that true happiness brings into its service all the noblest and most 
beautiful arts of life. Some persons seem to fancy that Utilitarians have nothing 
to do with music, painting, sculpture ; care nothing for the glories and grandeurs of 
the world ; have no part in the treasures of the imagination, — as if there were no 
utility in any of these. But we recognize in them the very high utility of touching 
to rapture some of the finest chords in our nature ; we know and feel just as well 
as others — and perhaps better than most, since we give ourselves more to scientific 
study of man — that there are different kinds and degrees of enjoyment, and that 
some kinds are far superior to others, and we know how to value the superior as 
compared with the inferior. But yet more, this social happiness implies all the 
great virtues in those who can attain and keep it : — Wisdom, for without this, 
transitory and selfish pleasures will be continually mistaken for happiness, and even 
with a desire for the common good, this good will be misconceived, and the wrong 
means taken to secure it ; Fortitude, to bear when necessary — and the necessity in 
the present state of the world is as frequent as it is stern — deprivation of personal 
comfort, rather than stifle our aspirations and relax our efforts for the general 
interest ; Temperance, for with excess no permanent happiness is possible ; 
Magnanimity, for only by aid of this virtue can we keep steadily in view, as the 
sole aim of all our striving, the sole aim worthy of true men and women, the 
greatest good of the greatest number : all little-mindedness ever turns to selfishness ; 
Justice, and above all else Justice, for it is the profound and unchangeable convic- 



COMITSM AND SECULARISM. 149 

" 5. On all questions outside these positive principles of Secularism, 
members are free to hold any opinions, and to promulgate such 
on their own responsibility. 

" II. — Objects. 

" I. The disseminating, promoting, and popularizing of the above 
principles by all legitimate means. 

" 2. The increasing of Secular Halls and Institutes in the cities and 
towns of Great Britain. 

" 3. The advocacy of Secular principles by lecturers, and the estab- 
lishment of Secular lectureships in populous districts. 

" 4. The dissemination of cheap literature expository or defensive of 
the Society's principles. 

" 5. The removal of all civil disabilities grounded on belief and the 
abolition of all public grants for sectarian purposes. 

" 6. The promotion of a purely Secular system of national education. 

*' 7. The promotion of political, social, or religious reform in anywise 
tending to increase the secular happiness of the people." 
Such, then, are the principles and aims of the Brihsh Secular 

Union, which justly claims to be the most numerous, influential, and 

" respectable " of all the free thinking Associations in England.^ Its 

tion of the equal rights of all which alone can inspire and impel us to seek the 
freedom and happiness of all : oppression since the world began having been based 
on injustice, the oppressors exaggerating their own rights at the expense of those of 
the oppressed. And to these great virtues of the mind we must add, as essential to 
true happiness, what are commonly called the virtues of the heart, the fervour of 
Zeal or Enthusiasm, and the finer fervour of Benevolence, Sympathy, or, to use the 
best name. Love. For if Wisdom gives the requisite light, Love alone can give the 
requisite vital heat : Wisdom, climbing the arduous mountain solitudes, must often 
let the lamp slip from her benumbed fingers, must often be near fainting in fatal 
lethargy amidst ice and snow-drifts, if Love be not there to cheer and revive her 
with the glow and the flames of the heart's quenchless fires." 

Now these words breathe the spirit of a noble piety ; and they might be ascribed 
to a devout Theist of any age — to a man capable of looking through the ever- 
changing forms of religious life and of recognising that reverence for God must end 
in blessedness for man. But the great defect of Secularism is its blindness with 
regard to the true significance of religious beliefs and their practical value in life. 
Hence the Secularist contemptuously casts aside what the philosophical Theist 
looks upon as a most marvellous natural provision for the spiritual needs of human 
life. Nature cares for her productions in a thousand ways, and even the grossest 
forms of religious belief, and the superstitions of the lowest types of civilization 
are evidences of such care in relation to the human soul. For as Emerson says, it 
takes a whole bundle of principles to make a girdle as strong as one superstition in 
the conduct of life ; while no one who watches with an unprejudiced eye the calm 
and happy days which simple and perchance very superstitious piety brings to un- 
awakened minds, can doubt its consolatory influence in life. But Mr. Thomson 



150 COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 

president is the Marquis of Queensberry; Pasteur and Renan are 
among its vice-presidents ; while Victor Hugo figures in the Society 
as an honorary member. The moral theories of its principal sup- 
porters are absolutely irreproachable, and they never lose a fitting 
opportunity for showing that Secularism is not to be confounded with 
Atheism, or the entire negation of rehgion. Mr. G. J. Holyoake, 
indeed, has preached more than once in Unitarian pulpits, both in 
England and America — a fact which speaks as well for the toleration 
of the Unitarians as it does for his own. The Inquirer having once 
expressed some surprise at this fact, Mr. Holyoake stated, in reply, 
that Unitarian ministers had often been invited to speak at Secular 
meetings, and that between Unitarianism and Secularism there was 
the common ground of practical morality. 

The desire to make Secularism a substitute for the old forms of 
faith in all the circumstances of life, has induced the Secularists to 
provide themselves with a ritual, which is entitled, The Secularises 
Manual of Songs and Ceremonies.^ Drawn up by Austin Holyoake 
and Charles Watts, it constitutes a true Secular liturgy for the naming 
of children, for marriage, for funerals, &c. The preface, which is 
written by Mr. Bradlaugh, explains that this ritual answers to a pressing 

seems to see nothing of all this ; the wisdom of which he speaks has brought him no 
spiritual insight. In common with a very large number of Secularists his attitude 
to religion is hostile and negative ; he is influenced by a sort of chronic phase 
of that fever of Scepticism which, as Schiller tells us, has to be passed through 
by all the best minds in their transition from the religion of dogmatic authority to 
that of consciousness or personal choice. Hence he says of God : "The true Secu- 
larist loves and reveres his fellow men whom he knows, not a phantasmal God- 
Fiend of whom he knows nothing." Then again of Christianity his words are: 
"It is ignoble in what it deems its noblest emotions, its love and reverence and 
adoration of the Deity, its ecstacies of Divine influx and communion. For these 
emotions are irrational, the object of the love is a dream and a delusion, the God 
revered and worshipped is pourtrayed in its own Bible as capricious, unjust, vindic- 
tive, merciless ; and these orgies of religious excitement which overstrain, rend, and 

often ruin the moral fibre, are as harmful as any other drunken revels 

It (Christianity) is thus essentially stagnant and inert ; it does but little useful work 
in the world ; it is perishing of atrophy, brain and heart and limbs irretrievably 
wasting away. In this life it has no future ; its future is in the life to come (or not 
to come !) ; its ideal is in the past, to which its vacant eyes are ever reverted in the 
dense gloom of its prison-cell." — These extracts speak for themselves; and they 
will show the reader that though Secularism professes to be neutral with regard to 
religion, it is not seldom blindly and bitterly hostile to all that the vast majority of 
mankind have hitherto looked upon as divine. — Translator. 

2. See the Secular Review for the 19th of August, 1882. 

3. London : Austin & Co. 



COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 151 

and frequently-expressed need of the English Freethinkers. — " As to 
the Marriage Service," it adds, "the Socialists formerly, and the 
Comtists recently, set us an example : the legal ceremony must be 
gone through before the Registrar, but the marriage can be celebrated 
in the usual place of meeting. The Naming of Infants is a frequent 
matter at our meetings, and a set form saves the possibility of the 
introduction of ridiculous or objectionable words. For the Burial 
Service, the last funeral I attended — in which emotion prevented me 
from completing my address at the grave — convinced me of the need 
to have some form of words always at hand for such occasions." 

. It would require too much space to reproduce this manual in its 
entirety; I will merely quote the first and last paragraphs of the 
address prepared for the naming of children : — 

" In publicly naming the infant now before us, we recognise the 
parents' desire to identify their offspring with the Secular Party, which 
proclaims the necessity of unfettered thought during the formation of 
character. Diversity of organization precludes uniformity of belief. 
We do not, therefore, guarantee that in after-life a child shall profess 
any class of opinions. But by keeping its mind free from theological 
creeds, we enable it the better to acquire a more liberal education 
than is permitted by the conventional faith of the Church." . . . 
"We sincerely hope that in after-life (here name the child) he (if 
the child be a girl, substitute the feminine gender) may have reason to 
rejoice in his fellowship with us. May the principles of Freethought 
enable him to brave successfully the battle of life. And as he sails 
o'er the billows of time, may experience increase his guiding power, 
that when arriving at maturity, he shall have acquired sufficient know- 
ledge to enable him to regulate aright his further career. And when 
the evening of his existence has arrived, may he obtain consolation 
from the reflection that his conduct has won the approval of the wise 
and the good, and that to the best of his ability he has been faithful 
to the mission of life." 

This extract shows how completely the Secularists have succeeded 
in excluding every element of sentiment and imagination from their 
solemn ceremonies. Their manual certainly embodies a considerable 
number of hymns, but apart from a few which are pretty freely 
suffused with the breath of Pantheism, these utilitarian lyrics are of so 



152 COMTISM AND SECULARISM. 

commonplace a character that in some cases they border on parody, 
not to say more in disparagement of them.i 

Now, however foreign these productions may appear to the religious 
sentiment, they are none the less fitted to show that the fundamental 
religiousness of the English character persists, even under the guise 
of modern scepticism. Thus the claim of the Secularists to find a 
substitute for religion and their attempts to imitate its forms, and to 
paraphrase its language, are, in a sense, the counter-proof of the same 
tehdencies which are revealed under other circumstances by the doings 
of the Salvation Army, and in the persistent growth of the strangest 
sects. To-day, we are certainly far enough from the state of things 
which justified Montesquieu in saying, on his return from London : 
" La religion est morte en Angleterre. Si quelqu'un park de religion^ 
tout le monde se met a rirey 

It is true the religious re-action which swept away, during the first 

half of this century, the indifference of the preceding period, seems 

to have passed its culminating point, and it is quite possible that in 

the presence of the difficulty of adjusting ancient beliefs to modern 

ideas, a new wave of scepticism may roll over English society. But 

what conclusion should be drawn from these oscillations of the religious 

sentiment, other than a lesson of more cautious judgment on the part 

of those who, yielding to the feeling of the moment or the whim of 

the hour, delight to proclaim, in turn, the final triumph of a definite 

faith, or the fading twilight of the last day of the gods ? The most 

we can clearly deduce from these phases of belief is the law which, 

through all the oscillations of the English spirit, reveals to us the 

steady progress of religious thought towards a more rational view of 

man's relation to the universe. 

I. Here, for instance, are the verses intended to replace the Ite Missa est, in 
Secular meetings : — 

"DISMISSION." 
" Farewell, dear friends ! adieu, adieu ; 
In social ways delight ; 
Then happiness will dwell with ycJu : 
Farewell, dear friends ! good-nigbt. 

"Farewell, dear friends! adieu, adieu; 
Remember us this night ; 
We claim to do the same for you : 
Farewell, dear friends! good-night. 

" Farewell, dear friends ! adieu, adieu ; 
Till we again unite ; 
The social system keep in view : 

Farewell, dear friends ! good-night.'* 



PART II. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE GENESIS OF UNITARIANISM IN THE UNITED 

STATES. 



Puritan origin of New England — ^John Robinson exhorting the pilgrims of the May 
Flower not to confine themselves to the theology of Luther and Calvin — What 
the Pilgrim Fathers sought in America — The Democratic and Autonomous 
organization of the Calvinistic congregations — Their intolerance — The causes 
which were destined to gradually lead Puritan society to the admission of religious 
liberty — Arminian re-action against the dogma of Predestination — Early con- 
troversies between religious liberals and Calvinists — Liberal tendencies of the 
Harvard University — Channingin 1815 — His Baltimore sermon — Rapid develop- 
ment of Unitarianism — Divisions in the old Calvinistic congregations — Founda- 
tion of the American Unitarian Association at Boston — The liberal side and the 
rationalistic side of the Unitarian development ; their relative importance — Weak 
points in the theology of Channing. 



As every one is aware, the religious sentiment played an important 
part in the colonization of Anglo-Saxon America. Three out of the 
four great settlements which the EngHsh founded on the western 
shores of the Atlantic, in the seventeenth century, owed their origin 
to those who had been proscribed on account of their religious 
opinions : the Puritans in New England, the Catholics in Maryland, 
and the Quakers in Pennsylvania. It was above all the first of these 
three elements which became an all-important factor in the develop- 
ment of American society. For it is its impress, modified by the 
spirit of the age, which even to-day, in spite of the incessant influence 
of emigration, is still to be everywhere found beneath the existing 
beliefs, customs and institutions of the United States. 

We have already seen how the Puritan movement began in England 
as early as the reign of Elizabeth, in the shape of protestations against 
the Liturgy and the official hierarchy. Spreading chiefly among the 
populace, it carried to extremes the democratic and religious prin- 
ciples of Calvinism. It will be readily understood, therefore, that its 
adherents soon came into collision with the established authority. 
But the persecutions they underwent in the reigns of Elizabeth and 



156 THE GENESIS OF UNITARIANISM 

James I. merely served to increase their numbers.^ In 1608, when 
the great majority of them were resigned to passively endure fines or 
imprisonment and even death itself on their native soil — awaiting the 
terrible revenge which, with the assistance of the Presbyterians, they 
were soon to inflict upon their persecutors — the most ardent and 
energetic, under the leadership of John Robinson, the former pastor 
of a congregation at Scrooby, fled to Leyden, in Holland. 

In this retreat they lived quietly for several years. Still their small 
community became more and more reduced, and it was not difficult 
to foresee that it would be ultimately absorbed by the Protestantism 
of Holland. They conceived, therefore, the bold project of founding 
a sort of religious colony in America, which should admit of their 
remaining connected with England and even receiving recruits from 
the mother country, by assuring them an asylum against new persecu- 
tion. Had they at that time any vision of the future that would open 
up before them? Be this as it may, their boldest dreams must 
assuredly have fallen far short of the great things their descendants 
have realized. 

The British Government, which simply desired to free the country 
of sectarians, alike troublesome to the Church and the State, did not 
long hesitate to grant them the distant concession in Virginia for 
which they asked; and the first body of emigrants, numbering a 
hundred men, women and children, embarked on board the May 
Flower on the 27th of July, 1620 — a date and a name of classic 
import in the United States. Our readers are doubtless aware how 
the chances of the voyage led the emigrants to land on the shores of 
New England, and how they availed themselves of this circumstance 
to organize in their own fashion an authority on this free soil, which 
was centred in themselves alone, and was not due in any way to the 
concession of a King or a company. 

John Robinson had remained in Europe, where he was making 

preparations to embark with the remainder of the community. Like 

a new Moses, however, death was to strike him down before he could 

reach the promised Canaan. In his farewell address to the pioneers 

of the Puritan emigration, on the Leyden quay, he uttered these 

1. It was stated in Parliament, in 1593, that more than twenty thousand persons 
frequented conventicles, and a proposition was advanced that they should be banished 
from the country, as the Moors had been from Spain. — Bancroft's History of the 
United States. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 157 

words, which may well be regarded as prophetic, whatever the sense he 
attached to them : " The Lord has more truth to break forth from his 
Holy Word. I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the reformed 
churches who are come to a period in religion and will go at present 
no further than the instruments of their reformation. Luther and 
Calvin were great and shining lights in their times; yet they penetrated 
not into the whole counsel of God," (Bancroft's History of the United 
States). 

This language was not to fall upon barren soil. Still it was too 
much in advance of its time to be immediately applied and under- 
stood by those to whom it was addressed, or indeed by him who 
uttered it. What the pilgrims of the May Flower^ fleeing from the 
persecutions of the Established Church, demanded of the New World, 
was not religious liberty as a general principle but their religious 
liberty, that is the right to form a Church after their own fashion, 
without the concurrence of the English hierarchy or the use of the 
English Liturgy. The government which they formed was a true 
democracy ; but it was emphatically a theocratic democracy, and we 
should seek in vain for anything in its constitution conformable to 
modern ideas, either in relation to Church and State, or even in 
regard to the rights of conscience and the liberty of worship. 

The Bible was their supreme law ; it was to inspire and supplement 
written laws. Their first care, when they founded any settlement, 
was to build a church, which soon became the centre of their in- 
dividual and social life. The first election was that of a Minister and 
Elders. The expenses of worship were charged upon all the in- 
habitants ', but the rights of citizenship belonged to "communicants" 
only, and the religious society reserved to itself the power to excom- 
municate infidels, sinners, or even the lukewarm whose only crime 
was that they did not consider themselves "in a state of grace." The 
first dissenters from the Puritan faith who wished to settle in the 
infant colony — two members of the English Church — were sent back 
to England by the ship which brought them. A series of Draconian 
laws closed the entrance into New England to Anabaptists, Antino- 
mians, Quakers and Catholics. In case of infraction, heretics were 
exposed to whipping and mutilation, and also to forced labour, "till 
they could be sent back at their own expense." The blasphemer and 
the Sabbath-breaker were liable to punishment which might even ex- 



158 THE GENESIS OF UNITARIANISM 

tend to death itself. This ferocious legislation did not remain a dead 
letter. New England had, in the seventeenth century, its Galas, its 
Labarre and its Urbain Grandier : in Massachusetts witches were 
executed down to the year 1692. 

It would, however, be unjust to forget that notwithstanding its 
intolerence, its austerity, and its narrowness of horizon, Galvinism, of 
all the current faiths of the epoch, was best fitted to make of a handful 
of emigrants the founders of a great and free nation. It is impossible 
not to observe its influence in the qualities which distinguished the 
first emigrants, and which are still prevalent among their descendants : 
confidence in the power of individual organization, determined per- 
sistence of labour, a taste for learning, with respect for women and a 
sentiment of the seriousness of life. We may smile at the minute and 
often vexatious rules in which the Puritan genius thought to find a 
barrier to the corruption of manners; but American Puritanism has 
none the less given, to the society, marked with its impress, two 
centuries of a morality more sincere and more general, if not indeed 
higher, than any other people has known. 

In short, the world is indebted to it for having made men equal 
and free. Gonstitutions drawn up with a great reinforcement of 
Biblical texts, in the first years of colonization, were so impregnated 
with the idea of self-government, that, except in those features which 
were contrary to liberty of conscience, they have remained nearly 
intact, down to the present day, in the New England States, and have 
served as models for the Federal Gonstitution, as well as for the par- 
ticular constitutions of the States subsequently formed in the Union. 

The religious organization of Galvinism was itself only an applica- 
tion of popular sovereignty. With Galvinists, the priest is no longer 
a being of superior virtue, invested with supernatural authority by the 
fact of his ordination, but simply a representative of his fellow- 
believers, the first among equals. It is universal suffrage, "the 
universal vote of the congregation of Ghrist," as Milton said, which 
forms the basis of association, appoints the officers, the pastor in- 
cluded, fixes the contribution of each member, tests the receipts and 
expenditure and decides all pending questions, without appeal. In- 
deed, among the Puritans, as at present among the Gongregationalists 
— their direct descendents — the body of the faithful constituted, not 
a Ghurch, but a collection of Ghurches absolutely independent and 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 159 

autonomous. It is easy to understand how greatly this organization 
which, notwithstanding the parallel development of the Anglican and 
Caltholic communions, may be considered even to-day as the national 
type/«r excellence of the American Church, must have favoured the 
establishment of democracy and thus prepared the way for the 
republic. But it must equally have led, by gradual extension, to the 
legal equality of other Churches, which, by the same principle claimed 
to interpret the Bible in their own way ; and this breach being once 
opened to the multiplicity of the Protestant sects, the civil tolerance 
of all opinions in religious matters was only a question of time. 

It is true the old world outran the new in this respect, since we find 
that as late as 1838 a citizen of Boston was condemned to a term of 
imprisonment for the crime of Atheism. But — while it is to the 
adversaries of the Church that we owe liberty of worship in Europe — 
in the United States, it is the natural product of an evolution which 
began in the religious origin of the nation. The pastor, Roger 
Williams, when he founded in 1636 the colony of Providence (now 
the State of Rhode-Island) upon the principle of absolute liberty and 
equal advantage for all forms of worship ;i William Penn inserting, in 
1 68 1, in the Charter of the State which bears his name, the prohibi- 
tion of defraying the expense of any worship whatever from the public 
treasury, " in order to prevent the ascendancy of any one sect above 
another;" the members of the first Congress who forbade imposing 
a religious oath on the federal officers as well as the imposition of laws 
"relating to the establishment or to the prohibition of a religion;" 

I. The colonization of Rhode-Island is certainly the starting-point of religious 
liberty in the United States. It has often been asserted that the Catholics, who 
founded, with Lord Baltimore, the colony of Maryland in 1649, established there 
the principle of religious liberty. It is true the Charter of this colony states that, in 
order to better assure the maintenance of reciprocal charity and friendship among 
the inhabitants, no one, provided that he professes to believe in Jesus Christ, shall 
be troubled, disturbed, or molested in his opinions or in the public worship con- 
nected with them. But in another passage of the same Act, it is said that any one 
who blasphemes the name of God, or denies the Holy Trinity or one of the Persons 
composing it, shall be punished with death (Ed. Laboulaye, Histoiredes Etas Unis. 
Paris, 1855). On the other hand, the Charter of Rhode-Island, which was drawn 
up in 1643, conformably to the liberal views of Roger Williams, and was confirmed 
in 1663 by the British Government, proclaims the most absolute liberty of conscience, 
" This colony," wrote the fanatic Colton Mather, in 1649 (quoted by Ed. Laboulaye), 
•'isahiveof Antinomians, Anti-Sabbatarians, Socinians, Quakers, Convulsionaries — 
in a word, of all creeds but those of true Christians. If a man lost his belief, he 
would be sure to find it in some village of Rhode-Island. Bona terra, malagens^ 



160 THE GENESIS OF UNITARIANISM 

and finally, the local legislators who established these principles, in 
the special constitutions of their States, were, speaking generally, 
anything but sceptics or rationalists : they were believers convinced 
of the infallibility of the Bible and of the excellence of their worship. 
MM. Laboulaye, De Laveleye and the other apologists of American 
democracy are right in claiming that the political and the religious 
liberty of the United States are both daughters of the Reformation ; 
only, it should not be forgotten that the second is much the younger. 

But there is a liberty of another order which, though much younger, 
may claim the same descent : this is intellectual liberty, the rejection 
of dogmatic prejudices, in a word. Rationalism. In this case again 
Europe was in advance of America. Still, here, too, an important 
distinction is to be noted. It is that, among the peoples of our Con- 
tinent standing at the head of modern culture, science has developed 
in an inverse ratio to religion ; while in the United States the most 
complete free inquiry appeared as the final outcome of religious evo- 
lution. From John Robinson to Theodore Parker, the line of descent 
is unbroken. 

The first immigrants professed Calvin's doctrines of Original Sin, 
Grace, and Predestination in all their integrity. But this gloomy 
fatalism by which man, incapable of attaining to any good by his own 
efforts, finds himself elected beforehand, by the arbitrary decree of his 
Creator, to salvation or damnation, shocked too much the most ele- 
mentary principles of justice and humanity not to speedily provoke 
a reaction in conformity with the requirements of human liberty and 
responsibility. The third generation of the Puritans had not disap- 
peared indeed before the dogma of predestination was found to clash 
with its old enemy Arminianism, which is the last stage before Deism, 
according to the remark of Wilberforce. In 1 737, several New England 
ministers began to teach that though human nature had doubtless 
been rendered essentially corrupt by original sin, still, owing to the 
Expiation on the Cross, man had been made to a certain extent the 
master of his own destiny. And though it was readily admitted that 
salvation must be regarded as the work of divine grace, it was never- 
theless held that this grace was accorded to those most worthy of it. 

Arminianism having once secured a footing, Socinianism was not long 
in making its appearance. President Adams said at the end of his career 
that, from 1750, a number of pastors and of the laity were more or less 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 161 

drawn over to Unitarianism. But still, the progress of this evolution 
was at first apparent only by the guarded silence respecting contested 
dogmas. Perhaps the Liberals were frightened at their own audacity, 
or did not exactly realize their beliefs. Even at the end of the century, 
when other recently created sects (the Universalists, the " Christians") 
had openly repudiated the dogma of the Trinity, the advanced Cal- 
vinists still rejected the qualification of Unitarians, and even main- 
tained the necessity of remaining in doubt upon all points of doctrine, 
— such as predestination, eternal punishment, the divinity of Christ, — 
when the Bible did not express itself in clear and formal terms. " The 
expressions of the Bible are only qualified to formulate Biblical 
mysteries.'' Such was the answer they invariably opposed to their 
adversaries, when the latter summoned them to define their beHef. 
Thus, by a strange inversion of parts, it was the Rationalists who wished 
to hold strictly to the letter of revelation, while the orthodox cried up 
the right and the duty of penetrating into its sense and developing its 
consequences. But this position was not long tenable for the Liberals ; 
and the true ground of conflict was delineated when, driven to the 
wall, they brought into the controversy the authority of natural religion 
and historical criticism. 

In 1805, Harvard University, which dated almost from the begin- 
ning of the colonization, but which had always shown itself hospitable 
to the most advanced tendencies, confided its Chair of Theology to a 
liberal minister. Dr. Ware. " They who came under Dr. Ware's in- 
fluence," wrote one of his pupils — Ezra Stiles Gannett — at a later 
period, " can never forget the calm dignity, the practical wisdom, the 
judicial fairness, or the friendly interest which secured for him more 
than respect. It was veneration that we felt. That clear, strong 
mind abhorred double dealing with truth or with men."i Such was 

I. Ezra Stiles Gannett, Unitarian minister in Boston; A Me??ioir, by his son, 
W. C. Gannett. Boston, 1875. — Ezra Stiles Gannett, the disciple and co-worker 
with Channing, exercised ministerial functions at Boston from 1824 to 1871, with a 
devotedness which was characterized by a modesty equal to its intensity. His 
biography, written with pious care by his son, Mr. W. C. Gannett, embodies infor- 
mation on the religious life of New England which is all the more instructive 
because the author has skilfully grouped around the sympathetic figure of his hero 
the events and personages of the whole period. The work has been reprinted in a 
popular edition by the British and Foreign Unitarian Association. It is surprising 
that no liberal Protestant writer has been as yet tempted to translate it into French, 
since, it would be difficult to find a more striking description of Unitarianism and 
its teachers. 

M 



162 THE GENESIS OF UNITARIANISM 

the theologian who was about to mould the future ministers of the 
national church. The orthodox cried out against the scandal, and 
established at Andover a school of theology, which was never to attain 
the celebrity of its rival. At the same time, they began to build 
churches for the voluntary exiles from the liberal congregations ; and, 
where they were in the majority, as in Connecticut and New Hamp- 
shire, they improvised ecclesiastical jurisdictions which expelled liberal 
ministers from the pulpit. An attempt was even made to introduce 
this procedure into Massachusetts, where Liberalism had its head- 
quarters, but it failed, and served only to precipitate the development 
of the schism. 

This was in 1815. W. E. Channing was then thirty-five years old. 
He had already officiated for more than twelve years in one of the 
most liberal and, at the same time, one of the most fashionable 
churches in Boston. His antecedents, his mental temperament, and 
even the ampHtude of his religious conceptions predisposed him to 
great caution in order to preserve the historic unity of the old Puritan 
congregations. But an accusation of hypocrisy, which Dr. Morse had 
openly thrown out against liberal ministers, led him boldly to vindicate 
the Unitarian name, and soon to take the head of the reformatory 
movement. It was only four years later that he pronounced at Balti- 
more the famous sermon, considered the definitive manifesto of 
American Unitarianism. "It made a sensation," says one of the 
best historians of this period, Mr. W. C. Gannett, " greater probably 
than any other sermon ever preached in America, before or since. "^ 

After having declared that he accepted, " without reserve or excep- 
tion," all the doctrines clearly taught by the Scriptures, Channing 
claimed that " the meaning [of the Scriptures] is to be sought in the 
same manner as that of other books ; " that is to say, by the constant 
exercise of reason. "It is to the tribunal of reason," said he, formally, 
"that God leaves the care of deciding the truth of revelation." 
Starting from this principle, he repudiated the favourite dogmas of 
Calvinism, in order to reduce the essential teachings of Scripture to 
the unity of God, to the immortality of the soul, to the regenerative 
mission of Jesus, to the moral perfection and the paternal government 
of the Creator. In fine, after an eloquent picture of the Christian 
virtues, he maintained that true Christianity consisted much more 

I. W. C. Gannett, Op. aV., p. 55. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 163 

in the practice of these virtues than in adhesion to any credo whatever. 
"To all who hear me," concluded he, "I would say with the apostle, 
* Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.' Do not, brethren, 
shrink from the duty of searching God's Word for yourselves, through 
fear of human censure and denunciation. Do not think that you 
may innocently follow the opinions which prevail around you, without 
investigation, on the ground that Christianity is now so purified from 
errors as to need no laborious research. . . . Much stubble is yet 
to be burned ; much rubbish to be removed ; many gaudy decorations, 
which a false taste has hung around Christianity, must be swept away ; 
and the earth-born fogs, which have long shrouded it, must be scat- 
tered before this divine fabric will rise before us in its native and 
awful majesty, in its harmonious proportions, in its mild and celestial 
splendours. This glorious reformation in the Church, we hope — 
under God's blessing — from the progress of the human intellect, from 
the moral progress of society, from the consequent decline of preju- 
dice and of bigotry, and, though last, not least, from the subversion 
of human authority in religion, from the fall of those hierarchies and 
other human institutions by which the minds of individuals are 
oppressed under the weight of numbers and a papal dominion is 
perpetuated in the Protestant Church." 

It has been said, with reason, that this discourse marked an epoch 
in the religious history of modern society. Undoubtedly, there had 
been seen elsewhere Christians proclaiming the necessity of bringing 
faith into accord with the progress of reason ; but never, since the 
foundation of Christianity, had the head of a church repudiated thus 
boldly all sectarian intolerance, and so openly declared war against 
every form of Orthodoxy. Calvin put, or replaced, democracy into 
Christianity : Channing introduced liberty. 

In her previous history, New England had generally had but one 
church and one pastor in a town. But, from this time, old congrega- 
tions were divided. Boston, which for a long time had proved itself 
the intellectual capital of the United States, was almost entirely con- 
quered by the new ideas. In Massachusetts, one hundred and twenty- 
five congregations broke away from Calvinism, and, among them, the 
first three churches which the Pilgrim Fathers founded upon the 
shores of America. To this number may be added the numerous 
liberal churches which, in imitation of the Calvinists, the Unitarians 



164 THE GENESIS OF UNITARIANISM 

founded wherever they withdrew from the existing church. In the 
neighbouring States, the movement made less sensible progress ; but 
congregations, which became centres of propagandism, were established 
successively in Baltimore, New York, Charleston, Philadelphia, Wash- 
ington, and even in cities of the West. 

Notwithstanding the reluctance of those who feared lest in creating 
an ecclesiastical organization they should follow too closely the steps 
of Orthodoxy, the American Unitarian Association for " diffusing the 
knowledge and promoting the interests of pure Christianity." was 
founded at Boston in 1825. It was not, however, a federation of 
Churches, but an association of individuals, who, in creating a valu- 
able agency for the spread of Unitarian opinions, never aimed at a 
system of denominational discipline. 

In fine, the Unitarian reformation represented a double effort : on 
one side, to give to Christianity a form more humane, more rational, 
and better adapted to the exigencies of the age; on the other, to 
substitute, in the formation of churches, sympathy of religious senti- 
ment for agreement in dogmatic belief Of these two features, the 
first, which seemed to contemporaries the more audacious, was, in 
reality, the less important for the future of Unitarianism. In sup- 
pressing the theological basis of the Church, Unitarians gave to 
religion the elasticity necessary to accommodate it to all the trans- 
formations which the ulterior development of scientific knowledge 
could require. They made it a religion indefinitely progressive, like 
the human mind itself Their doctrinal innovations, on the contrary, 
— radical as they were for the epoch, — represented only a transitory 
state, a moinent in the religious evolution of the mind. 

Channing doubtless proclaims the sovereignty of reason in the most 
absolute manner : " The truth is," said he, " and it ought not to be 
denied, that our ultimate reliance is and must be on our own reason. 
. . . . I am surer that my rational nature is from God than that 
any book is the expression of his will." Would he have expressed 
himself with so much assurance if he had not possessed the conviction 
that his personal views on the pre-existence of Christ and the validity 
of the Biblical Revelation, had nothing to fear from free inquiry ? 
This is a question which it is neither possible to answer nor even fair 
to ask. Channing, like all the American Unitarians of the first 
generation, remained faithful to the theology of Locke, which, as we 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 165 

have seen, sought in miracles the proof, if not the credentials, of 
Revelation, while they left its interpretation and significance to the 
ordinary processes of reason. 

It must be remembered that, at the commencement of this century, 
Biblical exegesis had as yet to be entirely created ; and, besides, the 
first Unitarians of the New World, absorbed in their struggle against 
Calvinism, had enough to do in extirpating the parasitic excrescences 
of the primitive revelation. It was at the hour when this controversy 
began to subside, in consequence of reciprocal weariness, that there 
arrived simultaneously from Germany the first results of a religious 
criticism henceforth emancipated from dogma, and the idealistic 
theories of the school of Kant, then in all the splendour of its popu- 
larity. The movement of ideas which this double leaven excited 
among the Unitarians of the second generation tended to nothing less 
than the founding of a new religion under the cover of Christianity. 
I refer to the doctrine to which Americans gave the name of Tran- 
scendentalism. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT— EMERSON AND 

PARKER. 



Transcendentalism ; origin and signification of the word — German Idealism in the 
United States — Circumstances favourable to the substitution of a mystic Ration- 
alism for the Sensational supernaturalism of the old Unitarian theology — Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, "the prince of the Transcendentalists" — His opinions on the 
unity of Nature, the continuity of progress, the identity of substance with mind, 
and of the Moral Law with the purpose of the universe — Sensation created by 
his discourse at the Harvard University in 1838 — The Transcendental Club and 
the leaders of the Transcendental movement — Attitude of the conservative Uni- 
tarians — Theodore Parker, the prophet of Transcendentalism — His sermon in 
1 84 1, on the transitory and the permanent elements in Christianity — His isolation 
in the midst of the Unitarian Churches — Growing success of his preaching at 
Boston — His work in the anti-slavery agitation — His double method : observation 
and intuition — His theology : the immanence of God in Conscience and in 
Nature — Application of his doctrine to morals and to politics — The golden age 
of Boston — The connection between the reign of Transcendentalism and the 
richest intellectual life of New England. 



The old Sensational school made of the soul a tabula rasa^ a mirror, 
limited to reflecting the impressions transmitted by the senses. Kant 
combatted this negative psychology in his Critique of Pure Reason 
by showing that the human mind possesses an innate organization of 
its own, independent of experience, and necessary for the formation 
of thought. Yet, from what reason thus apprehended, under the 
form of Transcendental conceptions, — that is, above the sphere of ex- 
perience, — namely, ideas of the absolute, the infinite, the ideal, he 
did not deduce, necessarily, the real existence of corresponding 
entities. Fichte, his disciple, advanced farther still in the way of 
subjective idealism, since he affirmed our inability to know anything 
with certainty outside of our own mind and its laws. Jacobi, on the 
contrary, and especially Schelling, inferred from the fact of our inward 
conceptions the objective reality, as much of the spiritual world as of 
the sensible. Later, Schleiermacher, placing the origin of religion in 
the feeUng of our dependence upon the Absolute, endeavoured to 
trace to individual revelation the dogmas of Christianity, without see- 



168 THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT 

ing that he sapped them at their base by his doctrine of the direct 
communication between the soul and God. 

After conquering the university lecture-room, renovating theology, 
and illuminating German literature, Transcendental idealism passed 
into France, where Cousin enchased it in his brilliant mosaic, under 
the name of impersonal reason ; and into England, where Coleridge 
became its apostle, Carlyle its historian, and Wordsworth its poet. 
But, considerable as was its action upon the development of European 
thought during the most fruitful and enthusiastic literary period of 
our century, nothing here is comparable to the influence which it 
exercised in New England in all the spheres of activity, intellectual, 
religious, and even social. 

It was by the works of Coleridge and Carlyle that it penetrated 
into the United States in the first-third of this century. The interest 
which it excited led the most distinguished writers of Boston to study 
German and French, that they might read at first hand Jacobi, Fichte, 
Schelling, Herder, Schleiermacher, and De Wette, and also Cousin, 
Jouffroy, and Benjamin Constant. Philosophic at first, the move- 
ment was not tardy in becoming exclusively religious. In 1835, 
James Walker, Professor of Ethics in Harvard University, assailed 
the sensational method of the dominant theology, and extolled re- 
course to a philosophy which constantly recalls our relations to the 
spiritual world. 

The new method was especially attractive to minds which had 
carried farthest the work of demolition, undertaken by modern exe- 
gesis, upon the dogmas of Christianity. The only traditions which 
the Unitarians had left as the basis of their religious system, the pre- 
existence of Christ and the authenticity of miracles, began to be 
shaken by the incessant progress of free inquiry. How natural, then, 
that those who were desirous of preserving the foundations of their 
faith, in this general shipwreck of dogmas, should have welcomed 
with eagerness a doctrine which, in extending to aU men the privilege 
of a direct communication with the Divine Being, allowed them to 
reduce to human proportions the person of Jesus, without taking from 
him the prestige of inspiration ! How could they have been other 
than attracted by the ingenious hypothesis of a sixth sense, which, open 
to the spiritual world, rendered useless the intervention of miracles to 
establish the existence of God and the immortality of the soul ! 



EMERSON AND PARKER. 169 

It may be said that Transcendentalism presented at the same time 
the complement and the corrective of the Unitarian reform. This latter 
was, pre-eminently, a religion of the head, the product of a critical 
and negative tendency. Its theology, as far as it had any, came by 
the process of subtraction, or by taking away successively from the 
Christian traditions the dogmas condemned by free scholarship. 
Transcendentalism proceeded by the way of clear and positive affirma- 
tion. It took for its point of departure the existence of a special 
faculty which permitted the human mind to seize directly spiritual 
truths. Regarding as facts of consciousness the three great axioms of 
Theism, — God, immortality, duty, — it placed them upon founda- 
tions which reason itself proclaimed independent of all experience and 
of all demonstration. Thus entrenched in the depths of consciousness 
and in the realm of the ideal, it easily found access to the sources of 
mysticism, which, by a singular phenomenon among a people so prac- 
tical, never seem exhausted in the American mind. In short, by its 
doctrine of impersonal reason, it embraced the profoundly Aryan con- 
ception of the neo-Platonic Word, which the Unitarians had suppressed 
from Christianity, in order to adhere to the strict Monotheism of the 
first evangelists. It thereby allied itself to the mystic sects founded 
in Protestantism upon the principle of interior illumination, except 
that it extended to all men the privilege of inspiration, which these 
sects wished to reserve to the adepts of a distinctive faith. 

" Transcendentalism," says its principal historian in New Zealand, 
Mr. O. B. Frothingham,! " possessed all the chief qualifications for a 
gospel. Its cardinal facts were few and manageable. Its data were 
secluded in the recesses of consciousness, out of reach of scientific 
investigation, remote from the gaze of vulgar scepticism — esoteric, 
having about them the charm of a sacred privacy, on which common 
sense and the critical understanding might not intrude. 

I. O. B. Frothingham, Transcendentalism in New England a History. New 
York: Putnam, 1880. I. Vol. — The author himself, although really belonging to 
a later generation, took an active part in the religious movement he has described ; 
but, since the failure of the Rationalistic Church which he had founded in New 
York, he has devoted himself to letters, in M^hich he occupies, above all as a critic, 
a distinguished rank. Much was said, about a year ago, respecting his conversion 
to Orthodoxy ; but he took care to deny this report in a letter to the New York 
Evening Post, on the 13th of November, 1881, in which he stated that, while 
recognizing that his old opinions did not embody the whole truth, he saw no reason 
to change them. 



170 THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT 

It possessed the character of indefiniteness and mystery, full of senti- 
ment and suggestion, that fascinates the imagination and lends itself 
so easily to acts of contemplation and worship. . . . Piety was a 
feature of Transcendentalism ; it loved devout hymns, music, the glow- 
ing language of aspiration, the word of awe and humility, emblems, 
symbols, expressions of inarticulate emotion, silence, contemplation, 
breathings after communion with the Infinite." 

Unitarianism, as a whole, was, however, far from casting itself into 
the arms of German idealism. The Unitarians of the first generation 
who wished to adhere to the positions conquered from Orthodoxy, 
and, in general, all who were not troubled in their belief in the super- 
naturalness of the Bible, regarded the progress of the new method 
with more distrust than enthusiasm. Some predicted that it would 
lead to fatal divisions in the bosom of Unitarianism ; others, that this 
invasion of idealism would bring, as usual, a sceptical re-action. 
Channing himself, who had so much insisted upon the authority, the 
grandeur, the divinity of the human soul, wrote, nevertheless, in the 
last years of his life, to Dr. Martineau, that the Transcendentalists 
appeared to him to be advancing toward the substitution of individual 
inspiration for Christianity. 

There was then in Boston a young minister who had just quitted 
his congregation through a scruple of conscience, because he was no 
longer willing to administer the sacrament of the communion. This 
was Ralph Waldo Emerson, the essayist, who, with the poet, Henry 
W. Longfellow, held, during a third of the century, the sceptre of 
American literature. In his first work. Nature^ published in 1836, he 
revealed that vigorous idealism which has caused him to be surnamed, 
in the United States, the Prince of Transcendentalists. Notwith- 
standing the fact that the blood of eight generations of clergymen 
flowed in his veins, he was anything but a theologian and a contro- 
versialist. Imagination and feeling were his leading characteristics ; 
he might almost be called an illumine of Rationalism. Some of his 
poetical productions and indeed of his prose dissertations on the 
eternal One, on the universal Spirit, of which Nature is simply the 
product and the symbol, and on the ineffable union of the individual 
soul with the universal or over-soul, suggest the latest philosophers of 
the Alexandrian school and even certain mystics of India : "All goes 
to show," says he, " that the soul is not an organ, but animates and 



EMERSON AND PARKER. 171 

exercises all organs, is not a function like the power of memory, of 
calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet ; it is not 
a faculty but a light, it is not the intellect or the will but the master 
of the intellect and the will ; it is the back ground of our bejng in 
which they lie, an immensity, not possessed and that cannot be 
possessed. From within or behind, a light shines through us on 
things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. 
A man is the fagade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good 
abide." 

This is certainly Pantheism, but a subjective Pantheism which tends 
to absorb God and nature into man, rather than man and nature into 
God. Besides, it is in the human mind that Emerson sees a solution 
of the problem of nature, together with the secret of history : *' Let 
man learn the revelation of all nature and of all thought to his heart ; 
this, namely : that the Highest dwells with him, that the sources of 
nature are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is there." " This 
human mind wrote history, and this must read it. The Sphinx must 
solve her own riddle. If the whole of history is in one man, it is all 

to be explained from individual experiences We are 

always coming up with the emphatic facts of history, in our private 
experience, and verifying them here. All history becomes subjective, 
in other words there is properly no history only biography." 

It is from this respect and reverence for the human individuality 
that Emerson escapes the rock upon which mysticism is ordinarily 
wrecked, and that he keeps his feet on the earth though he lifts him- 
self up to the heavens : " As soon as every man is apprised of the 
divine presence within his own mind, is apprised that the perfect law 
of duty corresponds with the laws of chemistry, of vegetation, of 
astronomy, as face to face in a glass; that the basis of duty, the 
order of society, the power of character, the wealth of culture, the 
perfection of taste all draw their essence from this moral sentiment, 
then we have a religion that exalts, that commands all the social and 

all the private action Pure doctrine always bears fruit 

in pure benefits. It is only by good works, it is only on the basis of 
active duty that worship finds its expression." 

Another question in which he shows himself to be entirely a child 
of the present age, is his extreme deference to scientific truth, which 



172 THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT 

he regards as a revelation of God. Twenty years before the publica- 
tion of the Origin of Species he wrote thus in Nature — 

"A subtle chain of countless rings, 
The next unto the furthest brings. 
The eye reads omens where it goes, 
And speaks all languages the rose. 
And striving to be man, the worm, 
Mounts through all the spires of form." 

This led Tyndall to say : " In him we have a poet and a profoundly 
religious man who is really and entirely undaunted by the discoveries 
of science, past, present and prospective. In his case poetry, with 
the joy of a bacchanal, takes her graver brother science by the hand 
and cheers him with immortal laughter." 

It has been contended that in Emerson the poet obscures the philo- 
sopher, and that no one could afifirm to what system of philosophy he 
belonged. In truth — as the Rev. Heber Newton showed, shortly after 
his death, in a funeral oration, which made a sensation in New York — 
Emerson professed the philosophy and the religion of Nature, but of 
a Nature idealized, and it is to this that the secret of his influence on 
contemporary society is to be traced. 

Not only does he admit the continuity of the universal development 

as well as the unity of Nature, of which he makes the Sphinx say, 

" Who telleth one of my meanings 
Is master of all that I am," 

but, even more, passing beyond the sphere of scientific observation, 

he glances at the essence of things as a spiritual force : " Nature is 

the incarnation of a word ... the world is mind precipitated," 

and he proclaims the identity of this force with the moral law revealed 

in the human conscience : " This ethical character so penetrates the 

bone and marrow of Nature as to seem the end for which it is made." 

Moral progress, moreover, is to him only a mirror of universal 

progress : " The moral sentiment speaks to every man the law after 

which the universe was made. We find parity, identity of design 

through Nature, and benefit to be the uniform aim; there is force 

always at work to make the best better and the worst good." Finally, 

he considers love to be an undeniable attribute of the Universal 

Power : 

" Wilt thou freeze Love's tidal flow, 
Whose streams through Nature circling go ? " 

Such is the doctrine which shines through all his works, but which 



EMERSON AND PARKER. ITS' 

he abstains from developing systematically and from discussing with 
those who deny it, so fully does it embody for him an order of truth 
that lies beyond the range of controversy. He deemed it worthy, 
moreover, of furnishing the plan of that harmonious temple to which 
he likened, in the following terms, the religion of the future : " There 
will be a new Church, founded on moral science, at first cold and 
naked, a babe in the manger again, the algebra and mathematics of 
ethical law, the Church of men to come, without shawns or psaltery 
or sackbut, but it will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters, 
science- for symbol and illustration; it will fast enough gather beauty, 
music, picture, poetry." 

Emerson was at the beginning of his renown when, in 1838, he 
pronounced before the Theological School of Harvard the celebrated 
discourse in which Transcendentalism avowed itself, for the first time, 
in open hostility with all Christian Churches, not excepting the Unita- 
rian. The orator reproached them, without distinction, with having 
looked for miracles — that is, the intervention of God — elsewhere than 
in the normal functions of natural laws ; with having disfigured, by 
their compromising exaggerations, the personality of Jesus, " the only 
soul in history who has appreciated the worth of a man/' in short, 
with having neglected the exploration of the human soul and its rela- 
tions with the divine mind " It is time," said he, " that 

the ill- suppressed murmur of all thoughtful men against the famine of 
our Churches should be heard through the sleep of indolence and 
over the din of routine. . . . The prayers and even the dogmas 
of our Churches are like the Zodiac of Denderah and the astro- 
nomical monuments of the Hindus, wholly isolated from anything now 
extant in the Hfe and business of the people. . . . With whatever 
exceptions, tradition characterizes the preaching of this country; it 
comes out of the memory and not out of the soul." 

The remedy for these defects was "first, soul, and second, soul, and 
evermore soul." — "I look for the teacher," added he, "that shall see 
the world to be the mirror of the soul, shall see the identity of the 
Law of Gravitation with purity of heart, and shall show that the 
Ought, that Duty, is one thing with Science, with Beauty and with 
Joy." 

This appeal was understood by all who were affected by the ideal- 
istic ferment. They soon had their centre of propagandism, the Tran- 



174: THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT 

scendental Club, and their organ, The Dial. In the first ranks of the 
young phalanx was seen another mystic, Bronson Alcott, a fervent 
admirer of Pythagoras and Plato, whom he regarded as the direct 
ancestors of Kant and of the whole Transcendental school ; George 
Ripley and James Freeman Clarke, who had been the first to carry 
into the pulpit the teachings of German idealism \ Samuel Longfellow, 
who, without attaining to the renown of his brother, has a collection 
of hymns and of poetry highly esteemed by his compatriots ; Orestes 
Brownson, an ardent propagandist, but of an unstable mind, who, 
at first a minister of a Presbyterian congregation, passed over to 
Rationalism, then to Universalism, and who, not content with pur- 
suing his transformations into the most extreme Transcendentalism, 
finished by seeking mental repose in the bosom of the Romish Church ; 
William Henry Channing, a nephew of the founder of Unitarianism, 
who became a missionary of the new gospel ; the future colonel of a 
national negro regiment in the War of the Secession, T. W. Higginson, 
who represented the practical tendencies of the movement, as Samuel 
Johnson personified its extreme individualism ; and, finally, C. A. 
Bartol, W. H. Furness, John Weiss, John Pierpont, Professor Francis, 
and, above all, Theodore Parker, the apostle and prophet of Tran- 
scendentalism. 

On the other hand, the conservative section of Unitarianism had 
taken the alarm ; and there were Unitarians who questioned whether 
Emerson ought still to be regarded as a Christian, precisely as twenty 
years before the question had been agitated whether they themselves 
belonged to Christianity or to " the religion of Boston." It was worse 
still when, in 1841, Theodore Parker, at an ordination in the Unitarian 
church of South Boston, delivered his sermon upon " The Transient 
and the Permanent Elements in Christianity." The permanent ele- 
ment was the great religious and moral virtues which Jesus, " that 
perfect type of the religious man," had manifested in himself, and had 
vivified in his love of humanity. The transient element was the rites 
and doctrines of Christianity, comprising the belief that the Bible 
contained a special revelation, and that the nature of Christ was 
unique in history. 

According to Mr. W. C. Gannett, this discourse made as much 
noise as the famous sermon of Dr. Channing, preached at Baltimore 
twenty-two years before. This time, it was no longer a question 



EMERSON AND PARKER. 175 

whether the author was a Christian ; he was treated as an infidel, a 
blasphemer, an atheist. The Boston Association of Ministers debated 
whether they should not expel him from their ranks. As their rules 
were opposed to this, they took the official step of requesting him to 
resign. " I am sorry for the Association," he answered, " but I can- 
not help it. I cannot take upon my shoulders the onus da7nnandi. 
This would be to avow that there is good cause for my withdrawal. 
. . . . They have, in a measure, identified me with freedom in 
religious matters." 

Certain members thought of a dissolution of the society, which 
would have allowed them to reorganize without the author of all this 
scandal. But the voice of moderation prevailed, — thanks to the 
sympathy, more or less acknowledged, felt for Parker among the 
younger ministers ; and perhaps also to the intervention of Dr. Ezra 
Stiles Gannett, who, although belonging to the conservative party, had 
a high esteem for the frank and loyal character of his fellow-minister. 
" It is not our way," he reminded his brethren, " to pass ecclesiastical 
censure. We are willing — at least we have said we were willing — to 
take the principle of free inquiry, with all its consequences." The 
Association, therefore, passed no resolution againt the audacious re- 
former ; but all the pulpits in Boston were henceforth closed against 
him. This situation continued until 1845. The adherents of the 
proscribed man then had a meeting, at which they resolved that 
*' Theodore Parker shall have a chance to be heard in Boston." They 
hired for him the Melodeon, a concert hall, in the hope that there 
would soon be gathered the elements of a congregation, The success 
of the movement surpassed all expectation, and the lapse of years 
merely served to increase it. In 1852, Parker had to be installed in a 
larger edifice where, until 1859, he announced Sunday after Sunday, 
the good news of Transcendentalism before thousands of auditors. 
His activity during this period, was truly immense : — When he could 
write and preach but one sermon a week, says one of his biographers, 
he fancied he had done nothing, and when he gave only twenty-four 
lectures a year he found that but a small matter. He was equally at 
home in all subjects, and whether it was a question of religion or 
politics, of the mischievous tendencies of public opinion or the evil 
of private scandal, nothing intimidated him when his conscience com- 
manded him to speak. In this respect, M. Albert Reville has 



176 THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT 

characterized him justly in speaking of him as a " prophet" in the old 
Biblical sense of the word. 

One day as he was denouncing, at a public meeting, the injustice of 
the war which the United States had declared against Mexico, some 
armed volunteers who were in the room tried to silence him by the 
threat of death. You wish to kill me, he cried. Well, I declare that 
in such case I will return alone and unarmed, and not one of you will 
be able to touch a hair of my head. Thus he went on with his 
speech, and no one dared to stop him. 

Slavery had not a more determined adversary, and he played a pre- 
ponderating part in the abolitionist movement, whose final triumph he 
predicted. When the Party in favour of slavery were in power and 
passed the Fugitive Slave Bill, in 1851, which enacted that fugitive 
slaves should be everywhere arrested, Parker declared that he would 
open his house to them, and that he would defend them even with 
arms in his hand. He kept his word, and, when reproached in con- 
sequence, for having put himself above the laws, he stated, in one of 
his sermons, that, on a certain occasion in Palestine, a no less legal 
decree of the High Priest, had ordered the pursuit and arrest of a 
certain stirrer up of sedition, named Jesus of Nazareth, and that 
Judas Iscariot was the only man who had had the courage to fulfil 
his constitutional obligation. And yet, added he, Judas Iscariot has 
anything but a good reputation in the Christian world. He is called 
the Son of Perdition. His conduct is declared to be criminal, and 
even the New Testament assumes that the Devil must have entered 
into him to inspire his odious crime. Ah ! continued he, what error 
has blinded us all ! Judas Iscariot a traitor ! Indeed ! Why he 
simply conquered hi^ prejudices. He merely knew how to perform a 
disagreeable duty. He maintained the law and the Constitution. 
He did all in his power to save the Union. Judas thou art a saint : 
the law of God never commands us to disobey human laws. " Sancte 
Iscariote, ora pro nobis." This sermon, which caused an immense 
stir, brought upon its author a criminal prosecution. But it merely 
ended in his triumphant acquittal, and he only continued his pro- 
pagandism with increased energy. 

We may regard Parker as the clearest and most logical interpreter 
of Transcendental principles. " A Transcendental religion needs," 
he said, " a Transcendental theology." His posthumous essay, 



EMERSON AND PARKER. 177 

Transcendentalism^ and also his first work, A Discourse on Matters 
Pertaining to Religion^ admirably sum up the doctrines which inspired 
his whole life, and which he believed destined to become the religion 
of enlightened minds during the next thousand years. There must 
not be sought in them a rigorous analysis of the psychological phe- 
nomena which serve as the basis of the philosophy of intuition. 
Parker had adopted as a starting-point the method of the followers 
of Kant. Henceforth, therefore, he declines to discuss its underlying 
principles, and contents himself with the application of it, to the search 
for and the development of religious truth. To be sure, he rejects 
neither the control nor the support of external observation ; but it is 
above all to internal phenomena that he turns in order to obtain 
decisive evidence for the existence of God and the doctrine of 
immortality. 

He begins by showing that there is in human nature a religious 
faculty or tendency side-by-side with our moral, emotional, and intel- 
lectual faculties. This faculty furnishes us with the first conception 
of the Infinite and the Absolute, just as our senses afford us a know- 
ledge of the qualities of matter. This primordial notion, fact of 
consciousness, or necessary truth, is afterwards laid hold of by Reason, 
which deduces from it the idea of a God infinite in power, in intelli- 
gence, in justice and in love. It is no longer the God of Deism or 
Sensationalism, external to the world and of doubtful utility. But 
rather it is a God universally and eternally active, who is immanent 
alike in mind and in matter. The laws of nature are his modes of 
action and miracles are therefore impossible, since they would form a 
violation of the divine laws. But God is not only immanent, he is 
also transcendent, that is, without limitations of any kind, infinite and 
absolute. The universe, as the manifestation of his activity, partici- 
pates in his perfection, but only in relation to the purpose for which 
it was created. As to the immortality of the soul, the best evidence 
of this is to be found in the longing for continued existence which is 
in the heart of man. 

Since God is immanent in human nature, " it follows that man is 
capable of inspiration from God, communion with God, not in raptures, 
not by miracles, but by the sober use of all his faculties, moral, intel- 
lectual, affectionate, religious. . . In this way Transcendentalism 
can legitimate the highest inspiration and explain the genesis of God's 



178 THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT 

noblest son, not as monstrous, but natural. In religion as in all things 
else there has been a progressive development of mankind. The 
world is a school; prophets, saints, saviours, men more eminently 
gifted and faithful, and so most eminently inspired — they are the 
schoolmasters to lead men up to God." 

Here are the terms in which Parker shows that science being a form 
of religion cannot possibly be in antagonism to it : — 

'' Men of science, as a class, do not war on the truths, the good- 
ness and the piety that are taught as religion, only on the errors, the 
evil, the impiety which bear its name. Science is the natural ally of 
religion. Shall we try and separate what God has joined ? We injure 
both by the attempt. The philosophers of this age have a profound 
love of truth, and show great industry and boldness in search thereof. 
In the name of truth they pluck down the strongholds of error, vener- 
able and old. All the attacks made on religion itself by men of 
science from Celsus to Feuerbach, have not done so much to bring 
religion into contempt as a single persecution for witchcraft, or a 
Bartholomew massacre made in the name of God."^ 

I. It is much to be regretted that Parker is not better known here in England. 
Many of those who are familiar with his name look upon him mainly as an advanced 
religious thinker, who was more at home in opposing the claims of orthodoxy than 
in teaching spiritual religion. But as a matter of fact he spoke at times with the 
voice of an inspired poet,, whose words glowed with holy fire. Take in illustration 
■of this, the following fine passage on the Joy of Faith, from his Discourse on Matters 
Pertaining to Religion, where he says — " No doubt there is joy in the success of 
earthly schemes. There is joy to the miser as he satiates his prurient palm with 
gold : there is joy to the fool of fortune when his gaming brings a prize. But what 
is it ? His request is granted, but leanness enters his soul. There is delight in 
feasting on the bounties of Earth, the garment in which God veils the brightness of 
his face ; in being filled with the fragrant loveliness of flowers ; the song of birds ; 
the hum of bees ; the sounds of ocean ; the rustle of the summer wind, heard at 
evening in the pine tops; in the cool running brooks 5 in the majestic sweep of un- 
dulating hills ; the grandeur of untamed forests ; the majesty of the mountain ; in 
the morning's virgin beauty ; in the maternal grace of evening, and the sublime and 
mystic pomp of night. Nature's silent sympathy — how beautiful it is ! 

"There is joy, no doubt there is joy, to the mind of Genius, when thought 
bursts on him as the tropic sun rending a cloud ; when Icmg trains of ideas sweep 
through his soul, like constellated orbs before an angel's eye ; when sublime thoughts 
and burning words rush to the heart ; when Nature unveils her secret truth, and 
some great Law breaks, all at once, upon a Newton's mind, and chaos ends in 
light ; when the hour of his inspiration and the joy of his genius is on him, 'tis 
then that this child of heaven feels a God-like delight. 'Tis sympathy with Truth. 

" There is a higher and more tranquil bliss when heart communes with heart ; 
when two souls unite in one, like mingling dew-drops on a rose, that scarcely touch 
the flower, but mirror the heavens in their little orbs ; when perfect love transforms 



EMERSON AND PARKER. 179 

It is in the individual conscience that the Transcendentalists ex- 
clusively sought the basis and sanction of morality. Some confined 
themselves to seeing in conscience a perfectible organ, demanding 
rational cultivation in order to reach its full development. But the 
majority held that man possesses within himself an absolute criterion 
of good and evil Such, too, was the opinion of Parker — 

" While experience shows what has been or is, conscience shows 
what should be and shall. Transcendental ethics look not at the 
consequences of virtue in this life or in the next as motive, therefore, 
to lead men to virtue. That is itself a good, an absolute good — to be 
loved not for what it brings, but is." 

Applied to politics, the Transcendental method led to the search 
for rules of government in conscience : " It does not so much quote 
precedents, contingent facts of experience as ideas, necessary facts of 
consciousness; it only quotes the precedent to obtain or illustrate the 
idea. . . . Conscience, in politics and in ethics, transcends expe- 
rience, and, a priori^ tells us of the just, the right, the good, the fair; 
not the relatively right alone, but the absolute right also." In his 

two souls, either man's or woman's, each to the other's image ; when one heart 
beats in two bosoms ; one spirit speaks with a divided tongue ; when the same soul 
is eloquent in mutual eyes — there is a rapture deep, serene, heart-felt, and abiding 
in this mysterious fellow-feeling with a congenial soul, which puts to shame the cold 
sympathy of Nature, and the ecstatic but short-lived bliss of Genius in his high 
and burning hour. 

' ' But the welfare of Religion is more than each or all of these. The glad re- 
liance that comes upon the man ; the sense of trust ; a rest with God ; the soul's 
exceeding peace ; the universal harmony ; the infinite within ; sympathy with the 
Soul of All — is bliss that words cannot pourtray. He only knows, who feels. The 
speech of a prophet cannot tell the tale. No : not if a seraph touched his lips with 
fire. In the high hour of religious visitation from the living God, there seems to 
be no separate thought ; the tide of universal life sets through the soul. The thought 
of self is gone. It is a little accident to be a king or a clown, a parent or a child. 
Man is at one with God, and He is All in All, Neither the loveliness of Nature, 
neither the joy of Genius, nor the sweet breathing of congenial hearts, that make 
delicious music as they beat — neither one nor all of these can equal the joy of the 
religious soul that is at one with God, so full of peace that prayer is needless. 
Nature undergoes a new transformation. — A story tells that when the rising sun fell 
on Memnon's statue, it wakened music in that breast of stone. Religion does the 
same with Nature, From the shining snake to the waterfall, it is all eloquent of 
God. As to John in the Apocalypse, there stands an angel in the sun ; the seraphim 
hang over every flower ; God speaks in each little grass that fringes a mountain 
rock. Then even Genius is wedded to greater bliss. His thoughts shine more 
brilliant when set in the light of Religion, Friendship and love it renders infinite. 
This is the joy Religion gives; its perennial rest; its everlasting life." — Translator. 



180 THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT 

respect, indeed, for the claims of the right, revealed by intuition, 
Parker goes so far as to maintain that no one owes obedience to a 
law which clashes with the requirements of absolute morality and 
right. " By birth," says he, " man is a citizen of the universe, subject 
to God. No oath of allegiance, no king, no parliament, no congress, 
no people can absolve him from his natural fealty thereto and alienate 
a man born to the rights, born to the duties of a citizen of God's 
universe. Over all human law, God alone has eminent domain." 

Parker does not fail to show the Transcendental character of the 
Declaration of Independence, which founded a Republican Govern- 
ment in the United States, or, to employ his happy definition, " the 
government of all, for all, and by all." In the same way he does not 
hesitate to recognize the idealistic character of the French Revolution : 

" In France men have an idea yet more Transcendental : to the 
intellectual idea of liberty and the moral idea of equality, they add 
the religious idea of fraternity, and so put politics and all legislation 
on a basis, divine and incontestable as the truths of mathematics. 
They say that rights and duties are before all human laws. America 
says : ' The Constitution of the United States is above the President, 
the Supreme Court above Congress.' France says : ' The Constitu- 
tion of the Universe is above the Constitution of France.' Forty 
million people say that. It transcends experience ; it is the grandest 
thing a nation eyer said in history." 

It is not customary to regard the French Revolution as the realiza- 
tion of a religious idea ; but there is nothing surprising in Parker's 
views, for those who know what he understood by religion. 

His preaching, which extends from 1841 to 1859, corresponds to 
the principal development of Transcendentalism. It was equally the 
golden age of Boston, and it may be added of American literature. 
The middle of this century has seen, indeed, within the narrow terri- 
tory of Massachusetts, one of those marvellous out-blossomings which 
are rarely reproduced in the moral culture of a people. Channing 
died in 1842 ; but it may be said that Parker worthily replaced him in 
the vanguard of religious Rationalism. By the side of Emerson, who 
was equally pre-eminent as philosopher and poet, Bancroft carried the 
principles of Transcendentalism into history ; Sumner, into inter- 
national law ; Alcott, into pedagogy ; Whittier, into poetry ; Margaret 
Fuller, into criticism ; Oliver Wendall Holmes revealed himself as a 



EMERSON AND PARKER. 181 

humourist ; Prescott published his History of the Spanish Conquest of 
Mexico ; Hawthorne put into romance his power of psychological an- 
alysis; H. W. Longfellow attained the meridian of his glory; and finally, 
Massachusetts furnished for the National Senate, Daniel Webster, the 
ablest orator the United States has produced. I merely cite those 
names whose echo has reached Europe. But by the side of these 
illustrious leaders, a whole army of writers, lecturers and orators did 
their part either in the literary and philosophical publications which 
multiplied in Boston, or in the different associations which were 
organized for the promotion of temperance, for the emancipation of 
woman, for the instruction of the people, for the suppression of war, 
for prison reform, and, above all, for the abolition of slavery. 

It is not difficult to discover the influence of Transcendentalism in 
these numerous "agitations;" not only because the exponents of this 
philosophy were found in the first rank, but also because these move- 
ments were the direct and logical consequence of a doctrine attribut- 
ing to every human being the same faculties and the same rights. To 
this influence, moreover, belong other more or less successful experi- 
ments, which aimed at radically reforming the principles of social 
organization. At one time it was George Ripley, who spent his for- 
tune in organizing a free community upon the principle of co- 
operation ; at another, it was A. B. Alcott, who, claiming the right to 
renounce the burdens as well as the advantages of actual society, 
allowed himself to be imprisoned for refusing to pay his taxes. This 
fever of reform was not confined to Rationalism. Revivals, exciting 
even to delirium the fervour of the various sects, passed like a billow 
over the whole of Protestant America, and New England furnished 
its quota to the eccentricities of Spiritualism and "free love." 

Yet what gives to this period a character very rare in times of 
religious and social fermentation, is that laxness of morals did not 
coincide with excessive mental excitement. Calvinism, in losing its 
dogmatic authority, had left with the people its strong moral discipline. 
Unitarianism had introduced free inquiry into matters of belief, and 
Transcendentalism had limited itself to adding thereto an enthusiasm 
for noble ideas. 



CHAPTER IX. 



FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 



Death of Parker ; his last significant words — Decline of Transcendentalism in its 
struggle with the New Scientific Philosophy — The two schools of Unitarianism 
in 1864 — Establishment of the National Unitarian Conference — Mr. Francis E. 
Adams and *' the battle of Syracuse" — Formation of the Free Religious Associ- 
ation in 1867 — Principles and objects of the Free Religious Movement — Congre- 
gations which have adopted its programme at Dorchester, Providence, Florence, 
&c. — The first congregation of New Bedford — The Religion of Ethics — Mr. 
Felix Adler— The Philosophy of the categorical imperative — Distinction between 
Theism and its doctrinal basis — The Religion of Duty — The Society for Ethical 
Culture at New York and at Chicago — Its philanthropical works — Recent mutual 
approach of Unitarianism and Free Religion — Rejection of every obligatory 
Credo by the National Unitarian Conference — Emancipation of the Unitarian 
Churches in the West — Free Religion among the Progressive Quakers and 
Spiritualists — The Freie-Religibse-Gemeinde — Reformed Judaism in America — 
Increasing Practical Character of religion in the United States — Progressive 
tendencies among the Episcopalians, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Presbyter- 
ians, the Congregationalists, &c. — The Rev. H. Ward Beech er and the Brooklyn 
Association of Congregational Ministers — The Catholics of the United States. 



Parker died in Italy, May 10, i860, on the eve of that War of 
Secession which he had perhaps hastened by the energy of his denun- 
ciations against slavery. It is related that, at the moment of dying, 
he murmured: "There are two Theodore Parkers now. One is 
dying here in Italy : the other I have planted in America. He will 
live there, and finish my work." The prediction of the dying man is 
realized, but perhaps not in the sense he attached to it. Parker lives 
more than ever in the United States, through the power exercised 
over imagination and character by the example of his inflexible fidelity 
to conviction, of his passionate love for truth and justice, and of his 
unshaken faith in the reconciliation of religion and progress. But, as 
to his favourite doctrine, — not admitting, with certain of his most 
recent biographers, that he would to-day with the same ardour extol 
the exclusive use of the experimental method, — it must be recognized 
that the philosophy of intuition has not answered the highest expec- 
tations of its prophet. 

The emancipation of the slaves was the great triumph of Tran- 
scendentalism, but it was also the beginning of its decline. The 
movement owed a great part of its popularity to the indifference 



184 FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 

which almost all the established churches had shown in opposing 
the scourge of slavery. When this odious institution was consumed 
in the flames of civil war, Transcendentalism lost its principal motive 
power over one portion of its adherents. On the other hand, indi- 
vidualism, which was at the bottom of its aspirations, was always a 
serious obstacle to its efforts at propagandism and to the grouping of 
its forces. Its essential aim, according to an expression of Samuel 
Johnson, was to lead each individual to become a church by himself, 
— which was to condemn the very principle of all permanent organi- 
zation upon religious grounds. 

The majority of its interpreters did not break away completely from 
Unitarianism, which had served as a cradle to the Transcendental 
doctrine; and, of the independent congregations which some of 
them endeavoured to establish in imitation of Parker, few had a 
long duration. Indeed, Transcendentalism represented a reaction 
against the exaggerations of the Sensational method of philosophy ; 
and, like all reactions, it went beyond its mark. Not content with 
affirming the importance of psychology, the necessity of recurring to 
internal observation to explain the origin of our knowledge, the apti- 
tude of the mind to conceive certain notions which cannot be the 
exclusive product of sensible experience, the existence of moral liberty, 
and the imperative character of duty, it professed to find in the human 
soul a complete and infallible perception of religious and moral truth. 

This was to prepare the way for an aggressive return of Sensa- 
tionalism, at the time when this philosophy, strengthened by the 
prodigious discoveries made by the natural sciences, claimed to furnish 
the synthesis of the universe. The weapon which had assured the 
victory to the school- of Kant over the partisans of Locke was the 
verification in the human mind of ideas which are not introduced 
there by experience. The neo-Sensationalism of our epoch has dis- 
placed the ground of controversy, by explaining the presence of notions 
a priori in the individual by hereditary transmission of accumulated 
experiences in the past of the race, and under this rejuvenated form 
it spread so much the more rapidly in the United States, because it 
was directly introduced there in the works of the scientific school at 
present predominant in England. 

It will be clear, however, that this return blow of contemporary 
Sensationahsm, though calculated to weaken the authority of the 



FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 185 

Transcendentalists in the bosom of the Unitarian Church, could 
hardly profit the partizans of the Sensational theology of Locke and 
Priestley. The Transcendentalists were still attached in a certain de- 
gree to the Christian tradition. Emerson, whose Christianity was 
contested by the conservatives, made of Jesus the principal educator 
of humanity ; and Parker, who was treated as an atheist, identified 
the moral teaching of Christ with absolute refigion. The new school, 
on the contrary, pursuing to the end its work of critical destruction, 
has stripped of his aureole the founder of Christianity, whom it places 
on a footing of equality with Buddha, Zoroaster, Moses, and Moham- 
med. At the end of the civil war, therefore, Unitarianism found 
itself more than ever divided into two factions : on the left, the 
Liberals who began to accept the name of Radicals ; on the right, the 
Conservatives of the old school (old-fashioned Unitarians). These, 
perhaps, did not insist with so much energy as formerly upon the 
Socinian theories of the pre-existence of Christ ; but they continued 
to make belief in the authenticity of Revelation the corner-stone of 
Christianity. The former, on the contrary, maintained that difference 
of opinion upon the infallibility and even upon the moral value of the 
Bible was not an obstacle to religious fraternity, and that the essence 
of Christianity was the practice of Christian virtues. 

On this last ground, indeed, agreement was easy, and there was an 
equal amount of enthusiasm in the two parties, when, after the Civil 
War, in 1864, Dr. Bellows proposed to unite the delegates from all 
the Unitarian Churches in a permanent confederation, in order to give 
more unity to their works of charity, of instruction, and of prop- 
agandism. The provisional assembly, composed of three delegates 
from each church and each local association, met at New York the 
first day of April, 1865. But differences appeared as soon as they 
came to settle the principles and even the title of the new association. 
Finally, after rejecting a long profession of faith drawn up in the name 
of the extreme right wing by Mr. A. Low, and adopting a declaration 
stating that the decisions of the majority should not be binding upon 
the minority, the delegates voted, perhaps in the spirit of compromise, 
a preamble expressing the "obligation of all the disciples of the Lord 
Jesus Christ to prove their faith by self-denial, and by the devotion of 
their lives and possessions to the service of God and the building up 
of the kingdom of his Son." This phraseology gave umbrage to the 



186 FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 

Radicals, who saw in it a declaration of allegiance to Christ ; and, in 
the following meeting, which opened at Syracuse, Oct. lo, 1866, one 
of their most distinguished representatives, Mr. Francis EUingwood 
Abbot, proposed to substitute for this preamble a declaration that 
" the object of Christianity is the universal diffusion of love, righteous- 
ness, and truth ; that perfect freedom of thought is the right and the 
duty of every human being;" and that the basis of religious organ- 
ization should be '' unity of spirit rather than uniformity of belief." 
At the same time, Mr. Abbot proposed to substitute the words " In- 
dependent Churches " for *' Christian Churches," which figured in the 
title of the Conference. ^ 

Perhaps, in the preceding year, the propositions of Mr. Abbot would 
have had some chance of being adopted ; for they served, chiefly, only 
to maintain in Unitarianism a statu quo consecrated by the experi- 
ence of half a century. But, after the Conference had officially 
hoisted its colours, this change of name and programme would not 
haye failed to be represented as a repudiation of Christ and of all 
Christian traditions. The only concession which it showed itself 
ready to grant was to add to its title, " The National Conference of 
Unitarian Churches," the words, "and other Christian Churches." 
This was a tender to Universalists and to all liberal congregations 
whose internal development had, by degrees, brought them near to 
Unitarian doctrines. But Mr. Abbot, seeing his propositions rejected, 
withdrew from Unitarianism ; and the following year he, with many 
of his liberal colleagues, — who, however, did not think it necessary to 
follow him in his withdrawal, — formed at Boston the Free Religious 
Association, which had for its object to realize, outside of every 
Christian communion, the programme rejected by the Conference of 
Syracuse. 

It is certain that the Unitarians were wanting in logic, when, on one 
side, they proclaimed the absolute sovereignty of reason, and, on the 
other, sought to identify themselves with the belief i"n the religious and 
moral superiority of Christianity. There was, therefore, a place for a 
broader organization, which should accept, in its most remote conse- 
quences, the principle of free inquiry, and which should remain open 
not only to " all the disciples of Christ," but also to " all the disciples 

I. James Freeman Clarke and Francis EUingwood Abbot, The Battle of Syra- 
cuse, Two Essays : Boston, 1875. 



FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 187 

of truth," — Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Mohammedans, Positivists, 
and even Atheists, — provided they should have in common the love 
of truth and the desire for goodness. The organizers of *'Free 
Religion" did not impose upon them the sacrifice of their particular 
beliefs, nor even of their connections with other religious associations : 
all that they asked of them was to unite upon the ground of spiritual 
unity detached from all dogmatic intolerance. 

The first article of their constitution states it to be the object of the 
Association " to promote the practical interests of pure religion, to 
increase fellowship in the spirit, and to encourage the scientific study 
of man's religious nature and history." The second article adds : 
" Membership in this Association shall leave each individual respon- 
sible for his own opinioi)^ alone, and affect in no degree his relations 
to other Associations; and nothing in the name or constitution of 
the Association shall ever be construed as limiting membership by 
any test of speculative opinion or belief, or as defining the position 
of the Association, collectively considered, with reference to any such 
opinion or belief, or as interfering in any other way with that absolute 
freedom of thought and expression which is the natural right of every 
rational being." 

The first public meeting, which was held in Boston, May 30, 1867, 
was a great success for the promoters of this movement. Not only a 
large number of the ministers and laity belonging to Unitarian con- 
gregations responded to their appeal, but also a considerable number 
of well-known persons from the liberal elements of the most diverse 
sects — Universalists, Progressive Quakers, Jews, and even Spiritualists. 
The Association chose for its president a Unitarian minister — who, 
later, transformed his society at New York into an independent 
organization — Mr. O. B. Frothingham, and for secretary, one of his 
colleagues at New Bedford, Mr. William J. Potter, whose name was 
soon erased from the official list of Unitarian ministers for his refusal 
to retain the name of Christian. 

Besides its annual meetings, devoted to discussions and papers, 
the Free Religious Association instituted a series of lectures in 
different cities of the country, and published a large number of pam- 
phlets to disseminate its views. It has for its organ The Index of 
Boston, a weekly paper — edited first by Mr. Abbot, and now by 
Messrs. Potter and Underwood — which deserves to be presented as 



188 FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 

a model for all free-thought publications in both hemispheres, as well 
for the attractiveness of its articles as for the breadth of its ideas, and 
more especially for the elevation of its moral tone. 

During the fifteen years since " Free Religion " thus took form, it 
has accomplished a work at once positive and negative — negative, by 
its Rationalistic utterances, which undermine more and more the bases 
of dogmatic sects, as well as the privileges still accorded to the 
Churches,! and positive, by its efforts to assign a common purpose to 
the religious activity of its members. 

At its annual meeting in 1882, the Free Religious Association re- 
solved to undertake a more active propagandism, with a view to bring 
about the establishment of local associations to put in practice the 
principles of Free Religion. Up to the jyesent, however, the con- 
gregations based upon the programme of the Association remain but 
few in number. I have seen no reference to any but those at Boston, 
Florence, Dorchester, East Dennis in Massachusetts, and Providence 
in Rhode-Island. A somewhat curious characteristic of the Free Re- 
ligious Congregation, established at Dorchester by some fifty families, 
is the fact of its being under the supervision of a lady, Mrs. Clara 
Bisbee. Some idea will be gained of the activity of the " ministress " 
when it is borne in mind that Mrs. Bisbee conducts the service, pre- 
sides at the organ, preaches the sermon, superintends a Sunday school, 
and gives lessons on the historic growth of religion to a class of adults.^ 

1. The separation of the Church from the State is not so complete among the 
Americans, as we are often led to suppose. It is true, the religious communities 
manage their own affairs as they please, and that on the other hand they receive no 
kind of subsidy from the Civil Authority. But the public institutions are still 
strongly impregnated with Christianity. Congress and the State Legislatures have 
their chaplains as well as the fleet, army and prisons. The Bible continues to be 
read in a great number of schools. The invocation to the Deity is, speaking 
generally, obligatory in the judicial and even in administrative oaths. In Penn- 
sylvania the Constitution demands that he who occupies a public office, must believe 
in God and the sanctions of a future life. The Constitution of Maryland does not 
accord liberty of conscience to any but Theists. Elsewhere the laws relating to 
blasphemy have never been formally abrogated. In certain States the tribunals 
lend their influence more or less indirectly to enforce the observation of the Sunday. 
In 1880, a court of law declined to recognise, even as a natural obligation, a debt 
contracted on the Sunday ; and a traveller injured in a railway accident has seen 
himself deprived of compensation, on the ground that he had no right to take the 
train on the Lord's Day. And lastly, the landed property devoted to the mainten- 
ance of worship is, to a large extent, freed from all kinds of taxation. 

2. Index of the 29th of June, 1882. 



FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 189 

Another Free Religious congregation at Providence, R.I., in 1881,, 
obtained for its minister the right of performing legal marriages, — a 
privilege till then reserved to ministers regularly ordained by a religious 
denomination and to justices of the peace. In connection with this 
there occurred, between the minister of the Free Religious congrega- 
tion, Mr. F. A. Hinckley, and the committee appointed by the local 
legislature to decide whether ''Free Religion" was really a religion, a 
dialogue which throws a very curious light upon the attitude adopted 
by the adherents of the new worship, in regard to theological ques- 
tions, properly so called. As the constitution of the society assigned 
to it " the practice of virtue, the study of truth, and the brotherhood 
of man," the chairman of the committee remarked that he could not 
discover to whom the petitioners addressed themselves in worship. 

Rev. F. A. Hinckley — ''As individuals, we represent all shades of 
liberal opinion \ but, as a society, we have a distinct element of wor- 
ship. All sane minds recognize a Power over and above us. We 
claim that the one great essential principle is recognized when we re- 
cognize this Power, though we do not recognize it in the same manner 
as do other denominations." 

A Member — "What do you worship?" 

Rev. Mr. Hinckley — " I am perfectly wiUing to tell you ; but I do 
not think it is within the province of the State to define what men 
shall or may worship." 

Member — " I understood that you said the other day that you did 
not recognize God, Christ, or the Bible." 

Rev. Mr. Hinckley — " What I said was that we could not recognize 
them as the creeds do. We do recognize a Power over and above the 
human." 

Member — " What you call a Power is what other people call 
God?" 

Rev. Mr. Hinckley — "Now, j^ou begin to define. The moment 
you do that, you find irreconcilable differences in the Churches as 
well as out of them." 

It should be said that the petitioners obtained the support of several 
ministers belonging to the Episcopal, Congregational, and Unitarian 
Churches of the city. We see thus that the spirit of religious tolera- 
tion has not degenerated in the old colony of Roger Williams. 



190 FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 

To the congregations directly founded upon the principles of *^Free 
Religion" may be added certain independent societies of every re- 
ligious denomination, as the First Congregation of New Bedford, 
which continued to sustain its minister, Mr. William J. Potter, when 
his name was erased from the Unitarian Year-Book. This Church, 
having its origin among the Puritans in the beginning of the 
eighteenth century, is reckoned as one of the first societies of Calvinistic 
descent which openly raised the Unitarian standard ; for this rupture 
with Orthodoxy dates from 1810, — that is, nine years before the dis- 
course of Channing, which was the distinctive signal of the schism. 
It would be very interesting to follow the movements of ideas which 
thus led from the strictest Calvinism to the most absolute Liberalism, 
a congregation standing in the ordinary conditions of American 
Churches. The different stages of this evolution would appear only 
in successive modifications of the ritual; the widening of the pro- 
fession of faith imposed upon communicants ; the disappearance of 
all distinction between communicants and non-communicants, between 
the members of the church and the members of the society; the 
transformation of the sacrament of the communion into a ceremony 
commemorative of the foundation of Christianity; the displacement 
of Christian symbolism by a service in honour of all the great re- 
ligious and social reformers. It is this which Mr. Potter set forth as 
follows in a sermon preached before his congregation in 1874 : — 

" The Society has been in your day, as in the days of our ecclesi- 
astical ancestors, under the law of evolution. It has progressed by 
natural growth. . . . There has been no break, no violence, no 
revolution, no coup diktat. Your present has grown out of your past, 
and whatever it be, is the logical consequence of your past. You have 
come in your historical career, — and that not so much by the special 
design of the Society, at any particular moment, as by the force of 
the natural logic of your course, — to the point where the use of creeds 
and covenants and even of names as representing theological distinc- 
tions, having naturally dropped away, you have opened the door to 
anyone of whatever faith, who may be drawn to seek fellowship among 
you. ... No one stands there to question any comer's present 
belief, or religious antecedents. Should any of those who have been 
called 'infidels' for any reason, secret or open, be attracted to these 
services, and desire regularly to associate with you, there is nothing 



FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 191 

in your rules of membership, and I know of nothing in your spirit, 
that would shut the door against them. Or should any of the Pro- 
gressive Jews, who are becoming prominent in the Judaism of this 
country, or any of the liberal adherents of the Asiatic faiths, Hindu, 
Buddhist, Mohammedan, chance to come to our city, as temporary or 
permanent residents, as is possible in this era of migration and travel, 
and should they find anything helpful in these Sunday services, and 
be drawn to seek religious fellowship among you, again I know of 
nothing in your spirit, and there is certainly nothing in your rules of 
membership, that would exclude them. Though organized and pro- 
gressing historically as a Christian Society, yet by the logical force of 
the Protestant principle of the right of private judgment, and of free 
inquiry, you have gradually widened your conditions of fellowship, 
until you recognize no conditions less broad than the human aspira- 
tion after truth and virtue and spiritual peace. Consistently with this 
record, the only opinion you could call heresy would be the opinion 
that should put creed before character, and subordinate the reality of 
a religious life to the wearing of a religious name."^ 

Though independent of the Free Religious Association, the Society 
for Ethical Culture in New York equally deserves a place in the first 
rank among the associations which have set up the standard of "Free 
Religion." Its minister, or rather its director, Mr. Felix Adler, from 
1878 to 1882 was president of the Free Religious Association, whose 
ethical and humanitarian tendencies he especially represents — that is, 
the part of the constitution above cited which relates to " the prac- 
tical interests of pure religion." It cannot be disguised that one of 
the most threatening issues for the future of modern society is that 
the weakening of positive religion weakens the power of morality, 
which has been so long linked to religious dogmas. Rationalists have 
seen this peril in the United States as in Europe ; but, while here 
they have endeavoured to establish morality upon principles indepen- 
dent of religion, there they seek to subordinate religion to it. Such 
is at least the tendency of which Professor Felix Adler is to-day the 
most brilliant interpreter. Mr. Adler is a young man whose mystic 
physiognomy recalls certain heads of the apostles. His father filled 

I. W. J. Potter. Two Discourses delivered before the First Congregational 
Society. New Bedford, 1874. 



192 FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 

the office of rabbi in the principal Jewish synagogue in New York. 
He himself was destined for the priesthood ; but, having been sent to 
Germany to complete his education, he there acquired Rationalistic 
convictions, which barred him from following his father's career. 
On his return to the United States, in 1873, he accepted a professor- 
ship in Cornell University, which he quitted three years afterwards to 
establish at New York a new religious association, under the title of 
"The Society for Ethical Culture." 

In philosophy, Mr. Adler belongs to the intuitive school, since he 
believes in the existence, in the human mind, of certain elements 
anterior and superior to all individual or even hereditary experience. 
But, in metaphysics, he holds strictly to the postulates of Kant, with- 
out attributing objective reality to the notions of God and immortality. 
"I do not -accept Theism," he says, in one of his lectures, "but the 
foundation can exist very well without a particular structure, and 
others may be raised upon it when the ancient one has crumbled into 
ruins. I cling with all my soul to the foundation on which Theism 
has been built : first, the denial of chance, the conviction that there 
is order in the world ; secondly, the conviction that this order is a 
good order, that there is progress in the world." According to this, 
it is not God, but moral law, which should be the object of religion. 
This religion, moreover, would be eminently practical. "Since diver- 
gency of beliefs will continue to be emphasized, it is necessary to 
place the moral law where it cannot be discussed — in practice. Men 
have so long disputed about the author of the law that the law itself 
has remained in shadow. Our movement is an, appeal to conscience, 
a cry for more justice, an exhortation to more duty."^ 

The first condition of success in such an undertaking, is to preach 
by example, and in this respect Ethical Culture is not less rigid than 
the old religious morality ; only its field of action is much more ex- 
tended. 

The associations for moral culture, says Mr. Adler, exercise an 
influence which is the more efficacious because they are founded on 
the personal regeneration of their members, and he mentions the 

I. Index of the 15th of September, 1881. This Agnosticism does not prevent 
Mr. Adler from recognizing the existence of an *' Ultimate Reality which lies 
behind all phenomena and from which the harmony of the world arises. " {Index 
of the 22nd of September, 1881). 



FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 193 

Temperance societies as an instance of this. But these pursue only 
one special aim, whilst Ethical Culture, being a religious reform, 
must be extended to every sphere of human activity. Thus, to 
borrow an illustration from the domain of Political Economy, he con- 
tinues, suppose you believed in the justice of a tax to be fixed pro- 
gressively according to a person's income : then you would not rest 
content with waiting for such an arrangement to become law ; but, if 
you wished to fulfil your religious duty, you would hasten to cast into 
the Public Treasury the sum which the general and obligatory appli- 
cation of your system would demand from you. 

^ It is upon these principles that Mr. Adler has organized his society 
in New York, with the concurrence of the most advanced minds of 
American Judaism. By degrees, some "Gentiles" have joined it, 
attracted as much by the growing reputation of the young reformer as 
by the largeness of his ideas; and, since 1880, the society has been 
obliged to occupy a more spacious hall. It has, indeed, one of the 
largest congregations in New York. Its " services," which take place 
on Sunday mornings, consist only of a lecture, between two pieces of 
music. But, after the public have left, the members come together 
in a private meeting for considering the different social works which 
they have established. These institutions are : (i) a Sunday School 
for the teaching of morals, as well as for instruction in the history of 
the principal faiths and even in the philosophy of religion; (2) a 
public kinder-garten organized after the method of Froebel ; (3) an 
industrial school, which was opened in 1878, with but one teacher 
and eight pupils, and possesses to-day a principal, eight assistant 
masters, and 250 scholars between the ages of three and nine: its 
instruction is free and in certain necessitous cases food and clothing 
are given to the children gratuitously; (4) a technical museum at- 
tached to the school ; and (5) a service of visitors or rather district 
nurses, who daily carry on their labour of love among the sick poor 
in the most wretched district of New York. 

The success of these undertakings has been a new means of pro- 
pagandism for the Society for Ethical Culture, which has thus won the 
esteem of even those who are hostile to its principles. It leaves, 
moreover, complete freedom to its members in the choice of their in- 
dividual religious beliefs. All that it asks from them is, that they 



194 FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 

shall place the duties of religion exclusively in the individual and 
social regeneration of humanity. 

A branch of the Society for Ethical Culture has been recently 
organized at Chicago, under the direction of Mr. W. Salter, and it has 
already begun to surround itself with philanthropical institutions based 
upon the model of the parent association.^ 

The Religion of Ethics is sometimes called by its adepts the Rec 
ligion of Humanity. And assuredly it possesses as strong a claim to 
this appellation as Comtism, and a still stronger one than Secularism. 
It might be defined, indeed, as Comtism without dogmatism, and as 
Secularism with the addition of the religious spirit. 

The influence of " Free Religion" is not limited to those societies 
which have accepted its name or its patronage. The Free Religious 
Association has become for Unitarianism what Unitarianism itself has 
been for other communions — a leaven of intellectual liberty. The 
Unitarians reckon, in the United States, according to their Annual 
Report of 1880, three hundred and forty-four congregations, three 
hundred and ninety-nine ministers (of whom three are women),^ two 
colleges, one at Harvard and the other at Meadville, one monthly 
review and several weekly journals, together with numerous charitable 
and philanthropical institutions. 

It might have been feared that after the secession of Messrs. Abbot, 
Potter, &c., their National Conference would incline more to the right 
wing. As a matter of fact, it did not hesitate to introduce into its 
rules, on the motion of the Rev. George Hepworth, a new paragraph 
in which, while re-affirming "allegiance to the Gospel," it solicited 
the co-operation of all "who wish to be followers of Christ." But 
shortly afterwards the author of this proposition went over to ortho- 
doxy, and with this disappearance of extreme elements, disappeared 
also the principal vitality of the controversy which had been carried 
on from the foundation of the Conference; and Unitarianism was 
thus able to concentrate its activity upon practical measures calculated 

1 . Another branch from the parent society was established in Boston last year 
( 1 884). — Translator. 

2. It was one of these ministresses, Mary A. SafFord, who preached the anniver- 
sary sermon of the "Western Unitarian Conference, on the occasion of its meeting at 
Chicago, in 1883. The subject was : ''Religion, its nature and development." — 
See Unity y of the i6th of May, 1883. 



FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 195 

to bring it nearer to the position chosen by the Free Religious Associa- 
tion. Hence to figure in future on the roll of Unitarianism it will 
suffice to style oneself a Christian after the manner of the Rev. — 
Chadwick, of Brooklyn, who extends this term to all who have formed 
their religious beliefs within the line of development of Christian civil- 
ization. The National Conference has even resolved to inscribe on 
its official list of ministers the names of all who might desire this, and 
who, in consequence, would consider themselves in their place there. 
At the session of 1882, indeed, it introduced into its constitution a 
new article, drawn up as follows, by the Rev. Minot J. Savage : — 

" While we believe that the preamble of the articles of our Consti- 
tution fairly represent the opinions of the majority of our Churches, 
yet we wish distinctly to put on record our declaration that they are 
no authoritative test of Unitarianism, and are not intended to exclude 
from our fellowship any who, while differing from us in belief, are in 
general sympathy with our purposes and practical aims." 

On several occasions within recent years Unitarian ministers have 
been seen to place their pulpits at the disposal of Agnostics such as 
Messrs. Adler and Underwood, while Mr. Holyoake, as a Secularist, 
and even Mr. Gottheil, of New York, a liberal Rabbi, have not been 
excluded. 

The United States have remained the head quarters of Unitarian- 
ism. A proof of the influence it still possesses there is to be sfeen in 
the fact that in the autumn of 1882, it collected by private subscrip- 
tion, in a few days, the sum of a hundred thousand pounds, to found 
a new theological institution. Still it cannot be said to have extended 
in proportion to the growth of population. Even in Boston, where 
it possesses about thirty congregations, it has scarcely penetrated to 
the lower classes, in which the predominance of Irish emigrants has 
developed to a considerable extent the power of Catholicism ; and 
among the superior classes it is opposed by the Episcopal Church, 
which is becoming more and more the fashionable Church of the 
United States. Besides, Boston itself has ceased to be the exclusive 
centre of intellectual culture, "the hub of the universe," as the 
neighbouring towns less favoured in the domain of intelligence, have 
ironically called it. On the one hand, the invasion of luxury and of 
social frivolity, has somewhat broke in upon the simplicity of manners 
and the thirst for moral enjoyment which had survived the severity of 



196 FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 

Calvinistic theology; on the other, St. Louis, Chicago and other 
towns of recent growth, are disputing with it the monopoly of letters 
and the direction of American thought. 

Happily for its numerical development, Unitarianism has found a 
fertile field for exploration in the states of the interior, where it re- 
sponds at once to the double need of intellectual liberty and of 
religious culture. It is not surprising, that it has taken a more inde- 
pendent position 'there than in the Eastern States. The Western 
Unitarian Conference has omitted in its constitution the preamble 
which provoked such regrettable dissensions in the National Confer- 
ence of 1865.1 Its principal organ. Unity ^ edited with great breadth 

I. The following particulars respecting the constitution and principles of the 
various Unitarian Churches and organization of the West will be of interest to the 
reader : — 

I. — Bases of the General Unitarian Associations of the West. 

(1) The Western Unitarian Conference. 

^^ Resolved, that the Western Unitarian Conference conditions its fellowship on 
no dogmatic tests, but welcomes all thereto who desire to work with it in advancing 
the Kingdom of God." — Resolution adopted unanimously at Chicago, May 7, iSy^. 

Its object: " The transaction of business pertaining to the general interests of 
the Societies connected with the Conference. — Articles of Incorporation, May 20, 
1882. 

Motto on its Seal: " Freedom, Fellowship and Character in Religion." 

(2) The Wopien^s Western Unitarian Conference. 

Its object: "The advancement of freedom, fellowship and character in religion.'*' 
— Articles of Incorporation, May j, 1882. 

(3) The Western Unitarian Sunday School Society. 

Its object : " To improve the quality of Sunday School publications, and to aid 
in making Sunday Schools effective nurseries of progressive, reverent and helpful 
Churches." — Articles of Incorporation, May 22, 1882. ^ 

II. — Bases of the Unitarian State Conferences of the West. 

(1) Wisconsin Conference of Unitarian and Independent Societies. 

''^Resolved, that charity being the central truth of all, and Unitarianism's 
grandest mission being to unite men in "the unity of the spirit in the bond of 
peace," we will welcome and fraternize with all men of whatever denomination, 
who are trying to advance in religious life. " — Adopted, 1872. 

" Resolved, that the Conference re-affirms its broad platform of faith in God 
and man ; that we will work for the advance of truth rather than the defence of 
dogma ; for humanity rather than for any sect ; for charity against churchism; and 
that we hold the name Unitarian in no narrower sense than that of effort to unite 
the best methods and spirit in all denominations under a peace that may become 
universal." — Adopted, 1873. 

(2) Michigan Conference of Unitarian and other Christian Churches^ 

''Whereas, we are persuaded that the truth on all subjects, as fast as it becomes 
known to us, is the sole and sufficient authority for all human belief; that justice is 



FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 197 

of view by the Rev. Jenkins L. Jones, has taken for its watchword 
the motto of Free Religion : freedom, character and fellowship in 
religion. Numerous churches and even entire groups of congrega- 
tions, such as the Conferences of Michigan and of Kansas, the Fra- 
ternity of the Liberal Religious Societies of Illinois, are declared open 
to all who can work with them, or derive any good from them. Thus 
the committee of the Free Religious Association said in their report 
for 1881, that "in the broadening and liberalizing of Unitarianism in 
the West, perhaps, can be found the most tangible evidence that one 
of the missions of the Association, in its fourteen years of existence, 
has not been in vain ; and evidence too that its work is not yet com- 
pleted." 

the certain and practicable law of all human conduct : that love is the highest and 
most effective temper of the human spirit : and 

Whereas, -we desire to rally the liberal minds of Michigan around this common 
centre, therefore, resolved, that the Michigan Unitarian Conference conditions its 
fellowship on no dogmatic tests, but welcomes all thereto who desire to work with 
it in advancing the kingdom of truth, righteousness and love." — Adopted, October^ 
1878. 

(3) Illinois Fraternity of Liberal Religious Societies. 

" We associate together as a religious fraternity in the interest of liberal and 
advanced thought. , . . We cordially invite to our fraternity all who would 
assist us in the advancement of truth and righteousness." — Constitution. 

Ptirpose: "We associate together as a religious fraternity in the interest of 
liberal and advanced thought ; our meetings to be so conducted as shall most 
directly conduce to our fraternal fellowship, our spiritual welfare and usefulness. 
We cordially invite to our fraternity all who would assist us in the advancement of 
truth and righteousness." — Adopted, 187 j. 

(4) Iowa Association of Unitarian and other Independent Churches. 

"The object of this Incorporation shall be the promotion of the interests of 
religion, of righteousness, freedom, and fellowship." — Articles of Incorporation, 18'jg. 

(5) Kansas Unitarian Conference . 

Its object: "To advance the cause of freedom, fellowship, and character in 
religion throughout the State of Kansas. 

* ' This Conference conditions its membership on no dogmatic tests, but invites 
the co-operation of all those willing to work with it for the advancement of truth 
and righteousness." — Constitution, adopted, 1880, 

(6) Nebraska Unitarian Association. 

Object: "To be the advancement of freedom, fellowship and character in 
religion in the State of Nebraska." — Articles of Incorporation, 1882. 

III. — Recent Unitarian Church Covenants in the West. 
(i) The Church at Ann Arbour, Michigan, 

' ' Believing in that Religion of Nature and the Human Soul, which existed 
before all Bibles, which has uttered, itself with greater or less clearness through 
the religious teachers of all lands and ages, but which was taught and impressed 



198 FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 

The course of ideas which has thus emancipated Unitarianism has 
been equally felt by many other sects. The Universalists, for instance, 
who claim to have a thousand congregations, possesses an advanced 
section who fraternize with the Free Religious movement. In the 
same way, the Progressive Friends of Longwood, in Pennsylvania, 
have absolutely adopted the programme of "Free Religion," if we are 
to judge from this manifesto put forward by their General Assembly 
in 1 88 1 : — ''The object of this meeting is to promote religion con- 
strued broadly as embracing all good, physical, moral and spiritual. 
Untrammelled by dogma, we paternally invite to meet with us all 
those who desire to make the world purer and better, and who hold 
the truth in higher honour than any creed or sect. We would meet 

upon the w.orld with unequalled power by Jesus of Nazareth, the great prophet 
of God, from whose words and life came Christianity, we (the undersigned), do 
hereby associate ourselves together as a Christian Church, for the purpose of pro- 
moting that religion in ourselves and in society around us, by cultivating among 
ourselves a spirit of sincere and loving brotherhood, and by endeavouring in every 
way in our power to do good in the world. Imposing no creed upon the consciences 
of any, we cordially welcome all to a place among us who sympathize with us in 
these our general aims." — Adopted^ 1880. 

(2) The Church at Des Moines^ Iowa. 

Bond of Union: "Recognizing the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of 
Mankind, receiving Jesus as Teacher, seeking the ' Spirit of Truth ' as 'the guide 
of our lives, and in the hope of immortal life, we associate ourselves together to 
maintain the public worship of God and to promote the welfare of humanity." — 
Adopted, iSyy. 

(3) The Church at Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Bond of Union : "We, whose names are here recorded, join ourselves together, 
heart and hand, as members of the First Congregational Church of Cincinnati, for 
the maintenance of a free, rational and liberal worship,^ the study and practice of 
the religious life, and to promote truth, righteousness, reverence and charity among 
men ; and we cordially invite to our fellowship all who sympathize in these pur- 
poses and will co-operate with us in working for the Kingdom of God." — 
Adopted, i8yg. 

(4) l^he Church at St. Paul, Minn. 

The Bond of Fellowship : "As those who believe in Religion ; 

"As those who believe in Freedom, Fellowship and Character in Religion ; 

"As those who believe that the Religious Life means the thankful, trustful, 
loyal and helpful life ; 

" And as those who believe that a Church is a brotherhood of helpers, wherein 
it is made easier to lead such a life, — 

"We join ourselves together, name, hand and heart, as members of Unity 
Church. 

"To sign this Bond of Fellowship is a solemn act of faith, of brotherhood, 
and of consecration. Oi faith in certain high ideals of life, which we revere as 
more important than any intellectual beliefs whatever ; of brotherhood to the men 



FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 199 

on common ground as brethren to consider by what means we may 
labour most effectually to lift humanity to higher levels. In a reverent 
spirit, we would examine the religious institutions which have grown 
out of the wants and convictions of the past, accepting them so far as 
they commend themselves to our conscientious judgment, and rejecting 
them freely when we must. Our supreme allegiance is due, not to 
the decrees of men, but to truth itself." 

With regard to Reformed Judaism, there is an important section 
who, — while entirely refusing to renounce their historic position, in 
order to avoid all suspicion of giving up their ancestral faith, in con- 
sequence of the social prejudices which persist even in the New 
World — have nevertheless seized the occasion for allying themselves, 

and women who here join themselves together, name, hand and heart ; of consC' 
cration, because one cannot take a pledge like this, of religious faith and fellowship, 
save in a reverent, earnest and unselfish spirit. To join our Church, then, is to 
enter into a covenant of love and service and right endeavour with each other, and 
to do this thoughtfully and reverently, as before One whom most of us rejoice to 
think of as 'our Father.' 

"All who in this reverent and earnest spirit believe that our Church-home is 
truly their Church-home, and who feel that that which our Church stands for in 
religion is what they mean their life to stand for— all such, provided none show 
good reason for objection, are welcomed heartily within our Fellowship." — 
Adopted, i8yg. 

(5) The Church at Quincy, Illinois. 

The Covenant: " We believe — 

'* That Religion is natural and needful to the human soul ; 

* * That the many things of the universe have their being in One Life, Power, 
Mystery, Righteousness, Mercy and Love ; 

' ' That the universe is beautiful and beneficent Order, in which ' is no vari- 
ableness, neither shadow of turning ; ' 

"That * all things work together for good ; ' that the Infinite Life in which we 
have our being is Power in the world to destroy the wrong, to establish the right ; 
that no good thing is failure and no evil thing is success ; 

"That we ought to reverence all holy saints, seers zxA prophets who 'have 
wrought righteousness,' and bless them for the light of their wisdom and goodness; 

*' That we ought to work to make the world better ; 

"That character is the supreme matter — not the beliefs we hold, but what we 
are in the heart ; 

' ' That in the search for truth, we ought to hold fast to freedom for ourselves 
and for all men ; 

" That we ought to welcome to our Fellowship all who are of earnest and sin- 
cere spirit and humble lovers of the truth ; that we should set the bond of human 
brotherhood high above that of creed or church ; and that we ought not to hold 
theological beliefs as conditions of our membership. 

" In these principles, and that we may help, comfort and cheer each other, we 
join our hearts and hands in this Church, and hereto set our names." — Adopted^ 1883. 



200" FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 

on the practical ground of religious fraternity, with the intellectual 
and moral forces of a civilization to which they will be for the future 
completely assimilated. The Reform of Judaism has perhaps been 
carried further in the United States than anywhere else. Not only 
have the party of Reform freed themselves from all the ritualistic, 
hygienic and social prescriptions which constitute the old law ; but 
there are also Rabbis who, not content with rejecting the infallibility 
of the Bible, go so far as to question the Divine Personality, that 
corner-stone of Semitic beliefs. Thus Rabbi S. W. Sonnesheim did 
not hesitate to declare at the seventh meeting of the Free Religious 
Association, that Reformed Judaism corresponded with the "Free 
Religious movement of the day." 

As much might doubtless be said of the numerous JFreie-Religiose- 
Gemeinde which the Germans have imported into the United States. 
By being brought over the Atlantic the greater part of these institu- 
tions have certainly assumed a more Radical character, as may be seen 
by the programme which was adopted by their delegates at the Con- 
vention of Milwaukee, in 1870. They there virtually declared in 
Article 2, their exclusion of all idea of a God, personal or impersonal," 
without seeing that they re-introduced the conception of the Deity in 
the following Article : " In Nature we recognise Justice, the continual 
development towards perfection and towards that fulness of the Beau- 
tiful which suffuses our existence with joy." 

And lastly we must not forget in this enumeration, the Spiritualists, 
who claim to possess three million adherents in the United States and 
who, according to Mr. O. B. Frothingham, certainly amount to at 
least one million. In the United States even more than in England 
Spiritualism tends to become an actual religion. Here is what Mr. W. 
Hepworth Dixon stated, fifteen years ago, in his curious work. New 
America: — "These millions,more or less, of Spiritualists announce-their 
personal conviction that the old religious gospels are exhausted, that the 
churches founded on them are dead ; that new revelations are required 
by men. They proclaim that the phenomena, now being produced in 
a hundred American cities — signs of mysterious origin, rappings by 
unknown agents, drawings by unseen hands — offer an acceptable 
ground-plan for a new, a true and a final faith in things unseen. They 
have already their progressive lyceums, their catechisms, their news- 



FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 201 

papers, their male and female prophets, mediums and clairvoyants ; 
their Sunday services, their festivals, their pic-nic parties, their camp- 
meetings, their local societies, their State organizations, their general 
conventions ; in short, all the machinery of our most active, most 
aggressive societies.^ . . . When we essay to judge a system so 
repugnant to our feelings, so hostile to our institutions, as this school 
of Spiritualism, it is needful, if we would be fair in censure, to 
remember that, strange as it may seem to onlookers, it has been em- 
braced by hundreds of learned men and pious women." 

The Legislature of Illinois recently imposed on every medium a 
license costing three hundred dollars; immediately the Spiritualists 
cried out against it as an act of religious oppression, on the ground 
that the mediums fulfil with their co-religionists the functions of the 
priest in the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish religions. On the other 
hand, Spiritualism seems to fraternize everywhere, not only with the 
adherents of Free Religion, but also with Agnostics, Atheists, and 
even Materialists, lending them its buildings, the aid of its journals, 
and even its lecturers.^ "Every Spiritualist is of necessity a Free 
Religionist, — said one of its partisans, Mr. Giles B. Stebbins, at the 
fourteenth meeting of the Free Religious Association — because the 
Spiritual philosophy, broad, eclectic and inclusive, knows no preju- 
dices, no limitations, no barriers, recognises no authority for truth, but 
only the truth of the soul for authority, and accepts the instructions of 
the human spirit, the testimony of human reason, the truth of human 
experience, and the results of scientific experiment as its basis of edu- 
cation. "^ 

1. The Index of October 23rd, 1884, announces the completion of the First 
Spiritual Temple in Boston. The building, whose cost is about 250,000 dollars, or 
;^52,ooo, includes a main hall for 500 people, besides ^all halls for lectures, 
schools and other purposes. 

2. See the Proceedings of the Congress of Free-Thinkers, held at Brussels in 
1880 : Mr. L. Rawson's Report. 

3. Here is the first article of the constitution of the American Spiritualist 
Association : "The objects and aims of this association are to study Spiritualism in 
its scientific, philosophical and religious aspects, and to teach its truths as we learn 
them ; to maintain high and pure principles on all vital questions of practical life and 
duty ; to seek for the best spiritual culture and the most harmonious character. " 
The same document proclaims the indestructibility of the soul, the possibility of 
entering into communication with Spirits, by the intervention of privileged but not 
infallible individuals, the universality and immutability of the laws of Nature, the 
necessity of placing morality before faith and conduct before belief, and finally, the 
continuity of progress in the Universe. 



202 FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 

All these advanced-guards of American religious life have been 
represented, simultaneously or in turn, on the Committee of the Free 
Religious Association : the Unitarians by the Rev. M. J. Savage, 
W. C. Gannett, John Weiss, John J. Sargent, &c. ; the Transcend- 
entalists by Emerson and Colonel Higginson; the Quakers by Lucretia 
Mott, who died in 1882, at the age of eighty; the Spiritualists by 
Robert Dale Owen; the German Materialists by Mr. Schunemann- 
Pott ; and the Reformed Jews by the Rabbi Isaac Wise, &c. It will 
be seen, by this genuine mosaic of religious opinions, how widely the 
action of that Society extends. We may add that on several occasions 
it has received messages of sympathy and encouragement from the 
Brahmoists of India by the intervention of Keshub Chunder Sen and 
Protab Chunder Mozoumdar. 

Doubtless, practical minds that have neither the leisure nor the 
taste to investigate religious questions; Conservatives who, through 
distrust of the unknown, remain faithful to the beliefs of their fathers; 
sceptics who see in worship only an element of social life necessary for 
the education of the young and for the celebration of domestic solern- 
nities — in a word, the great majority of the nation, remain, and will 
for a long time remain, attached to the different forms of positive 
Christianity. Without being held in such high esteem as in former 
ages, ecclesiastical functions still figure in the first rank of the liberal 
professions. According to the Census of 1870, there existed in the 
United States 72,000 congregations, or one for every 529 inhabitants. 
The value of the property belonging to them was estimated at upwards 
of forty millions sterling, irrespective of annual contributions. In the 
rich congregations of large towns, it is not rare to find ministers in 
receipt of a salary ranging from two to three thousand pounds a year.i 
The proportion of persons attending public worship has continued to 
increase, if we may rely upon the statistics furnished by the Rev. R. 
Spears, according to which the aggregate of American Churches con- 
stituted in 1775 but one member in sixteen of the inhabitants; in 
1792, one in eighteen; in 1825, one in fourteen; in 1853, one in 
seven ; in i860, one in five; and, finally, in 1875, nearly one to every 

I. At New York the Revs. Dix and Potter (Episcopalians) each receive 12,000 
dollars per annum ; the Rev. John Hall (Presbyterian) 15,000 {Index, 21st April, 
1881). The Rev. "Ward Beecher (CongregationaHst), of Brooklyn, receives 20,000 
or upwards of four thousand pounds {Inquirer of Feb. 3rd, 1883). 



FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 203 

two.i I must add, however, that an article, published by The Nation, 
of the 29th of November, 1883, makes certain reserves with respect 
to these figures. Since, 1850, according to this article, the increase 
of population has been 116 per cent, whilst the number of persons 
belonging to the Churches has increased at the rate of 185 per cent. 
It is true that many congregations, as The Nation observes, reckon 
to-day the children in the statistics of their members. 

However this may be, even among the most orthodox sects, the 
Utilitarian tendency, which has created Free Religion, is becoming 
more and more observable. Tocqueville remarked some time since, 
that instead of insisting upon the other life, American preachers turned 
constantly to the earth, and had so to speak great difficulty in detach- 
ing their gaze therefrom. If one reads to-day the American journals 
of Monday the report of the principal sermons preached the preceding 
day by the ministers of the different sects, he will be surprised to see 
the small place which theology occupies compared with morals. The 
old Calvinistic theology is nowhere taught in its integrity. Even the 
flames of hell have become an argument in bad taste, which is willingly 
left to Revival preachers and missionaries of the Far West. "A 
heathen, desirous to learn the doctrines of Christianity," recently 
wrote a contributor to the North American Review, in an article on 
The Religion of the day, " might attend the best of our churches for a 
whole year and not hear one word of the torments of Hell or the anger 
of an offended Deity ; and not enough of the Fall of man or the 
sacrificial sufferings of Christ to offend the most bigotted disciple of 
Evolution. Listening and observing for himself, he would infer that 
the way of salvation consisted in declaring his faith in a few abstract 
doctrines, which both preacher and hearer seem quite ready to explain 
away as far as possible ; become a regular attendant at church and 
church sociables ; put something into the contribution-box every Sun- 
day, and in every way behave as much as possible like his neighbours.'' 

I. It would be interesting to ascertain in what proportion these gains are shared 
by the different sects. According to an article " Religion in America," published 
in the North A??ierican Review of January, 1876, the Churches stood as follows 
in the order of importance about the year 1780 : ist, Congregationalists ; 2nd, 
Baptists ; 3rd, Episcopalians ; 4th, Presbyterians ; 5th, Reformed Germans ; 6th, 
Reformed Church of Holland ; 7th, Catholics. According to the Census of 1870, 
however, they stand thus: ist, Methodists; 2nd, Baptists; 3rd, Presbyterians; 
4th, Catholics ; 5th, Christians ; 6th, Lutherans ; 7th, Congregationalists ; 8th, 
Episcopalians. 



204 FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 

Some three or four years ago, Colonel IngersoU having uttered a 
violent philippic against the American Churches, one of the most 
respected chiefs of the Republican party, Thurlow Tweed, replied to 
the attacks by saying, " Our clergymen no longer emphasize the gloomy 
sides of theology as formerly. At the present day their ministry is a 
ministry of peace, charity, and benevolence. This generation is learn- 
ing to love and serve rather than to dread our Creator and Lord." 

There is at present a party in all the Protestant denominations 
whose object is to enlarge, interpret and extend the field of their 

I. Colonel Ingersoll speaks or writes in a "smart," flippant and sometimes 
coarse style ; and unfortunately he does not possess the dimmest conception of the 
origin and true significance of the legendary and" other Biblical stories which he 
ridicules. This is strikingly shown in his lecture entitled ^^ Mistakes of Moses. ''^ 
What, as landmarks of the long ago, is full of interest to the scholar and thinker, 
by the mere negation of orthodox literalism, he treats with contempt. His method 
is that of Voltaire, and though he puts certain inconsistencies of the orthodox world 
in a striking and forcible manner, it may be doubted whether he really advances 
serious religious thought. In the lecture in question, for instance, he introduces 
the following imaginary dialogue in illustration of the importance religious people 
attach to mere belief. The scene is the Day of Judgment, and the recording angel 
or " secretary " says to the soul of a man: — "Where are you from?" "I am 
from the world." "Yes, sir. What kind of a man were you?" " Well, I don't 
like to talk about myself." " But you have to. What kind of a man were you ?" 
* ' Well, I was a good fellow ; I loved my wife, I loved my children. My home 
was my heaven ; my fireside was my paradise, and to sit there and see the lights 
and shadows falling on the faces of those I love, that to me was a perpetual joy. I 
never gave one of them a solitary moment of pain. I don't owe a dollar in the 
world, and I left enough to pay my funeral expenses and keep the wolf of want 
from the door of the house I loved. That is the kind of a man I am." "Did 
you belong to any church ?" "I did not. They were too narrow for me. They 
were always expecting to be happy simply because somebody else was to be 
damned." "Well, did you believe that rib story?" "What rib story? Do you 
mean that Adam and Eve business ? No, I did not. To tell you the God's truth, 
that was a little more than I could swallow." "To hell with him! Next. 
Where are you from?" "I'm from the world too." "Do you belong to any 
church ?" " Yes, sir, and to the Young Men's Christian Association." "What is 
your business?" " Cashier in a bank." "Did you ever run off with any of the 
money?" "I don't like to tell, sir." **Well, but you have to?" "Yes, sir; I 
did." " AVhat kind of a bank did you have?" " A savings bank." " How much 
did you run off with?" "One hundred thousand dollars." " ".Did you take any- 
thing else along with you?" ''Yes, sir." "What?" "I took my neighbour's 
wife." "Did you have a wife and children of your own?" "Yes, sir." "And 
you deserted them?" "Oh, yes; but such was my confidence in God that I 
believed he would take care of them." " Have you heard of them since?" "No, 
sir." " Did you believe that rib story ?" "Ah, bless your soul, yes ! I believed 
all of it, sir ; I often used to be sorry that there were not harder stories yet in the 
Bible, so that I could show what my faith could do." "You believed it, did you?" 
"Yes, with all my heart." " Give him a harp." — Translator. 



FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 205 

operations. With the Episcopalians who long since rendered the use 
of the Athanasian Creed optional in their liturgy, this tendency has 
brought on the schism of the Episcopal Reformed Church, which is 
directed as much against the Broad Church party as against the ritual- 
istic practices of the High Church section. Among the Methodists 
and Presbyterians the tendency is shown, as indeed among their co- 
religionists of the British Isles, by the numerous trials for heresy brought 
before their Conferences and Synods, in relation to both ministers and 
congregations. Even the popular Baptist body is not escaping the 
influence of this liberalizing movement, at least in its most advanced 
section : the Christians of the New Connection and the Campbellites, 
or Disciples, who have always been Liberals, or at least Arminians in 
theology. " We are glad to learn by a recent letter from America — 
wrote Mr. Spears in 1876 — that the Disciples are becoming more and 
more liberal among themselves and towards others. It is not unlikely 
that the * Christian ' Connection and the Disciples may soon form one 
grand Christian organization of about 5,000 churches, called by the 
Christian name and based on nothing but the Christian scriptures." 1 

But the progress of ideas is most perceptible among the Congre- 
gationalists, who have no central authority to maintain doctrine and 
discipline in their Churches. The most celebrated and popular of 
their preachers, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, said in a sermon on 
Religious Doubt^ preached in 1881 : "let no man count himself an 
infidel who believes that righteousness is the great end of human life, 
and who longs for a more perfect reduction of his will to the moral 
sense." Might we not suppose these to be the words of Mr. Potter 
or Mr. Adler or even of the convention of Milwaukee ? 

So great is the present popularity of Mr. Beecher that several 
policemen are required to keep order in the crowd which collects 
round the doors of his vast "Tabernacle" twice every Sunday. With 
a view to hear one of his sermons I have myself been obliged to wait 
half-an-hour in the open air during a pelting rain, and even then only 
succeeded in getting a seat at the extreme end of the building. The 
interior of his Church, which will contain several thousand persons, 

I. Rise and Progress of Unitarian Doctrines in Modern Times, p. 33. Among 
the American sects which have renounced the Trinity, Mr. Spears mentions also 
the Christadelphians, the Adventists, and the Followers of John Winnebrenner, 
who, some thirty years ago, gathered together fifty thousand adherents into a com- 
munion called the Church of God, &c. 



206 FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 

is extremely simple in common with all Congregational Churches. 
There is no religious symbolism, not even a cross ; the only ornamen- 
tation being the flowers round the pulpit. The back of the building 
is occupied by an immense organ whose roll and swell accompany 
the voices of an admirably composed choir. The congregation join 
in the singing of the hymns with a fervour which no one would ex- 
pect in such a vast gathering. The mere letting of the front seats 
brings in, I was told, from seven to eight thousand pounds a year. 

Mr. Beecher is an old man with long white hair, of middle height 
and a tendency to corpulence ; but in spite of his seventy years, he 
displays activity and vigour, whilst he is possessed of a powerful and 
singularly pathetic voice. ^ He long since freed himself from dog- 
matic Calvinism; recently, however, he seems to have assumed a 
more aggressive attitude towards the theology still literally accepted 
by a certain number of congregations. Thus, in a recent article in 
The North American Review^ on the "Progress of Ideas in the 
Church," he develops this threefold thesis : that religious activity, so 
far from diminishing, is increasing every day in America, as may be 
seen by the multiplication of new Churches ; that this activity em- 
braces a world of influences unknown to the Puritans ; and, finally, 
that the lines of demarcation between the various Christian sects are 
everywhere disappearing. He then makes a direct attack upon the 
theology of the Middle Ages, more particularly with regard to the doc- 
trines of the Fall and Predestination, which he treats thus : " The 
present generation can remember the time when these hideous 
doctrines were widely and vigorously preached. The explosions of 
indignation which they called forth were looked upon as a proof that 
the heart of man was in a state of revolt against God. They may 
be preached still, but it is in apologetic terms, and no longer with 
that tone of authority which carries conviction : they rather defend 

I. The second time I saw him was in the autumn of 1880, at a political meeting, 
where he spoke on behalf of the candidature of Mr. Garfiel(i, who was seeking the 
Presidential chair. Being on a balcony of the Fifth Avenue, a few days after this 
meeting, in order to witness a grand review of the Volunteers of New York, I 
suddenly saw the eager masses on the pavement below salute with their applause 
one of the principal regiments of Brooklyn. On horseback, by the side of the 
colonel, there was a gentleman dressed in black, with his sword at his side, who was 
saluting right and left in response to the hurrahs of the crowd. It was Mr. Beecher, 
who was fulfilling the duties, or rather was present officially, as the chaplain of the 
regiment of his district. 



FREE RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF ETHICS. 207 

than affirm themselves. Speaking generally, they lie at the bottom of 
the pulpit like a corpse in the sepulchre." 

The criticism which this rejection of the old theology called forth 
from certain of his colleagues, led Mr. Beecher to tender his resigna- 
tion as a member of the Congregational body in the autumn of 1882. 
But the Brooklyn Association of Congregational Ministers unani- 
mously refused to accept it by passing a resolution stating that " the 
full and proffered exposition of doctrinal views which he has made at 
this meeting, indicates the propriety of his continued membership in 
this or any other Congregational Association." This incident, which 
made a great noise, is not only a striking sign of the progress realized 
in the ideas of American Protestantism, but it is also calculated to 
promote the spirit of freedom among preachers and congregations in 
the sects which remain nominally faithful to orthodoxy. 

Even Catholicism, which, though unable to change its dogmas, seeks 
to enlarge its influence, above all by its good works, by the extent of 
its charities, by the excellence of its day and boarding schools, and 
by co-operating, as occasion requires, with the clergy of the Protestant 
Churches in the common work of some moral or philanthropic 
undertaking.! 

I. The Roman Church, which is placed in the United States on a footing of 
absolute equality with the other sects, has not been able to wholly disregard the 
bonds of spiritual confraternity, which are superior to all dogmatic divergences. 
For instance, we see from the biography of Ezra Stiles Gannett, that at the time of 
his ordination in 1830, in the Federal Street Unitarian Church at Boston, the 
ceremony, presided over by Channing, was honoured by the presence of ministers 
belonging to the Congregational, Evangelical, Baptist, Universalist, Presbyterian 
and Catholic communions. 



CHAPTER X. 



COSMISM AND THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION. 



Persistence of Metaphysical Speculations in the United States — Importance given 
to religious questions in the press and in literature — Clubs and Philosophical 
Associations — The Hegelian Academy at Concord — Religious Fermentation in 
the West — Symptoms Characteristic of Changing Beliefs — Aspirations for a New 
Religious Synthesis extending even to the ranks of the Free Religionists — Eclipse 
of the Transcendental school — Progress of Evolution in the United States ; the 
religious character it has assumed there — Professor J. Fiske's Cosmic Philosophy 
— Cosmism according to Mr. W. Potter : "Faith and Confidence in the Universe" 
— The Rev. Minot J. Savage and the Religion of Evolution — Cosmism regarded 
as the crowning result of Christianity — Tendency of the American mind to trans- 
form Philosophy into Religion — Quotations from the writings of O. B. Frothing- 
ham, F. A. Abbot, and W. Gannett—The Theology of Evolution in the 
orthodox congregations — Tocqueville's Prediction that American Democracy 
would end in Pantheism. 



Are we to conclude from what has been just stated that America 
is on the eve of sacrificing theology and even metaphysics on 
the altar of Positivism, and instituting a religion like that dreamed 
of by Comte, having for its objects humanity and earthly life 
instead of God and a future life ? This conclusion would be rash. 
There are, undoubtedly, in the United States a certain number 
of persons systematically hostile to every ontological conception, as 
well as to every religious idea, who proscribe even all mention 
of the Absolute and the Unknowable, because they see in such 
phrases an approach to theology. Some confine themselves to 
referring to the primordial properties of matter for the explanation 
of all. phenomena. Others hold still to the criticisims of Voltaire and 
Hobbes, without suspecting that the progress of science has pro- 
foundly modified the conditions of the problem. It is this class 
which is represented by the Truth Seeker of New York and the 
Investigator of Boston. In the latter city, they have for their head- 
quarters an edifice erected to the memory of an American member of 
the French Convention — Thomas Paine — whose philosophical writ- 
ings, though completely forgotten in France, still play in the religious 
controversies of the United States a part equally exaggerated by reason 



210 COSMISM AND THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION. 

of the indignation of their adversaries and the enthusiasm of their ad- 
mirers. But Positivism, properly so called, whether in the sober and 
severe acceptation which Littre has given to the doctrine of Auguste 
Comte, or under the more embellished form of Comtism, which has 
obtained considerable success in England, has but few followers in 
the United States, notwithstanding the favour which the positive 
methods enjoy there. If, as a matter of fact, the " Religion of Hu- 
manity " predominates among the followers of Mr. Potter and Pro- 
fessor Adler, as well as among the Free Religionists, it is not associated 
with Comtist dogmatism, but is in the form which Mr. W. Frey has 
given to it — that is, without the exclusion of a belief in the mysterious 
Power of which the universe is a manifestation. The American shows 
no predilection for fasting, even in metaphysics. Never has specu- 
lation taken higher flights than in these later times in the United 
States. There are, outside of the religious press, — even in localities 
of secondary culture, — ^journals whose title alone is sufficiently signifi- 
cant, such as The Platonist^ of Osceola, Mo. ; The Journal of 
Speculative Philosophy^ of St. Louis, devoted to the advocacy of the 
doctrines of Hegel; The Religio-Philosophical Journal^ of Chicago, 
which printed lately, it is said, nine thousand copies. 

After having shown in The Index of February 23rd, 1882, that the 
severest phase of the struggle is over for the advocates of Liberal 
ideas, Mrs. Sarah A. Underwood points out for instance that religious 
speculation has never been more free and active. " The newspaper 
most prompt to report any new departure in the religious world," she 
wrote, " is apt to be the newspaper with the largest daily circulation. 
Our magazines discuss more leisurely and with greater dignity the 
grave religious questions of the hour. Our reviews are mainly devoted 
to discussing religious issues. Our new evangelists are making religion, 
more than ever before in the history of the world, the leading topic in 
literature. Even the romance writers weave religious discussions into 
both warp and woof of their stories." 

From New York to San Francisco, from Chicago to Cincinnati, 
every city of consequence has its metaphysical club or institute. The 
most celebrated is, unquestionably, the School of Philosophy, opened 
at Concord, Mass., in 1879, by Mr. Bronson Alcott, with a vigour that 
does honour to the eighty years of this venerable neo-Pythagorean, as 
well as to the vegetable diet of which he has, from principle, been a 



COSMISM AND THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION. 211 

faithful adherent for more than forty years. The School at Concord 
seems an attempt to reproduce, in the midst of American society of 
the nineteenth century, the garden of the Academy where Plato and 
his disciples discoursed under the shade of the olive-trees. Every 
summer in the month of July, an intelligent company, drawn from all 
points of the Union to the little town of Concord, meet at Mr. Alcott's 
place, — the Orchard House,— where are given courses, or rather free 
lectures, upon philosophy. The principal difference from the Greek 
Academy — wholly to the advantage of Concord — is that the door is 
not closed against the fair sex, who largely profit by it, if the reports 
may be believed, which attribute to them two-thirds of the attendance, 
estimated in 1882 at nearly a hundred and fifty persons. There are 
two lectures a day, one at nine o'clock in the morning, the other at 
half-past seven in the evening. In the interval, the students, male 
and female, arrange their notes, take their meals at home, or walk in 
the pine woods, exchanging their ideas upon the grave problems of 
our destiny. Among the principal lecturers, besides Mr. Alcott, are 
Dr. Jones, the founder of the Platonic Clubs in Illinois ; Professor 
Harris, editor of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy ; Mrs. Howe; 
William Henry Channing ; Professor Emory, etc. Emerson himself 
was heard there in 1880. 

These names sufficiently show that the philosophy of Hegel prevails 
almost exclusively at Concord, although the founders of the school 
proclaimed the most absolute liberty of opinion. It is a strange 
phenomenon of the religious movement of the United States, this 
revival of the Hegelian doctrine, at the time when, in Germany, the 
death of Professor Rosenkranz has vacated the last chair devoted to 
pure Hegelianism. Such has been the increasing success of the insti- 
tution founded by Mr. Alcott that the orthodox have felt obliged to 
establish a competitor by founding, two years ago, on the same basis, 
at Greenwood, near New York, an " Encampment of Christian Phi- 
losophy." 

Among the less cultivated population of the West, the instability of 
belief has naturally taken a more violent and aggressive form. A 
member of the Free Religious Association reported, at the general 
meeting in i88t, that there were in Kansas, even in the smallest 
towns, groups of Liberals not only unchurched, but openly hostile to 
all existing forms of religious organization. At the same session 



212 COSMISM AND THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION. 

another speaker (a Spiritualist) told of the existence of a hundred 
meetings in the open air in the Western States, independent of all 
sects, of people who came together *' to say before God what they 
believed in their souls to be the truth," — labourers from their farms, 
men of business forsaking their offices, women leaving their house- 
hold cares, all "drawn by an inward hunger for spiritual nourish- 
ment." These two statements have nothing contradictory about 
them ; they rather complement each other. They equally prove the 
thirst for a new faith among those who are no longer satisfied with the 
old religious forms. It is, in some sort, the last term of the disin- 
tegration, or of the breaking up, which, as its goal, the spirit of 
Protestantism has never ceased to pursue into the very heart of 
dogmatic Churches and confessions of faith. But it might also be 
the inevitable transition between two currents of belief. 

Coming side by side with this intellectual fermentation, the 
tendency to relegate theology to the second place in religious activity, 
even in certain orthodox Churches, which has found its most complete 
expression in the platform of the Free Religious Association, may 
well be considered a symptom of the religious interregnum, long ago 
predicted by Emerson. It is probable, and we may rejoice at it, that 
religion will preserve in future the eminently practical and humani- 
tarian character which has come to distinguish it, more and more, in 
the United States. But men will always have a tendency to group 
themselves according to their beliefs ; and we already hear, even in 
the ranks of the Free Religious Association, the day predicted when 
a new religious synthesis shall present itself for acceptance, by the 
force of evidence alone, to all the adherents of "Free Religion." 

" We do not contend," said the Executive Committee of the Free 
Religious Association, in its fourth annual report, " that the religious 
sentiment is historically exhausted, and that it has uttered the last 
word of absolute religion. On the contrary, we are of opinion that 
the organ of the religious consciousness is as full- of life to-day as it 
has ever been, and we think that the approaching transformations in 
the religious condition of the world, whatever their nature, will be 
produced, not by mechanical combinations of the best elements of 
the religions of the past, but by a regular, organic and progressive 
development." Mr. F. E. Abbot, again, wrote, in 1872, in a small 
pamphlet, entitled The God of Science : "The world for half a century 



COSMISM AND THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION. 213 

has been groping blindly to find this greatly-needed philosophy of 
science. . . . That philosophy has not yet come. But when it 
comes, as come it must and will, it will create, sooner or later, 
throughout the civilized world, a unity of intellectual convictions 
which has never yet been paralleled, even in the boasted " ages of 
faith," — not, of course, a unity of all opinions, but a unity of funda- 
mental principles and methods of thinking. And when it comes, — 
a philosophy of science whose basis shall be solid truth, and whose 
philosophy shall be unfettered reason, — then, I most profoundly 
believe, will the enlightened idea of God be so firmly fixed in the 
human mind that Christianity and Atheism shall become alike mere 
traditions of the past." 

Is it possible now to foresee whence will be drawn the elements of 
this new theology? According to Mr. Potter, the existing rival 
schools of intuition and observation will both have a part to play in 
the formation of the philosophy destined to perfect the work of " Free 
Religion." We share with Mr. Potter the profound conviction that 
intuition will have its word to utter in the future development of 
psychology, and we are far from contesting the happy and durable 
influence which Transcendentalism has exercised upon the public 
mind of the American people. We cannot, however, repress the 
question whether, as a system of metaphysics and religion, the school 
of German Idealism may not have run its course in the United States 
as it has in Europe ? Almost all its old champions have remained 
loyal to the faith of their youth. Emerson, Johnson, Margaret Fuller, 
Ripley, Lydia Child, died, as they had lived, in the Transcendental 
faith. Those who survive, Higginson, Wasson, Samuel Longfellow, 
and Henry Channing, use to-day the same language they did forty 
years ago, with a conviction and enthusiasm which neither age, nor the 
friction of life, nor even the progress of positive science has cooled. 
But their ranks are thinning more and more ; and, notwithstanding 
the momentary fashion of Hegelianism at Concord, new recruits do 
not come to take the place of those who have gone to seek in another 
world the confirmation of their hopes. 

Of a considerable number of congregations founded by the Tran- 
scendental movement, there remained, lately, only the Church of 
Samuel Johnson, at Lynn, Mass. Even this probably owed its longevity 
only to the personal influence of its minister, and it is to be feared 



214 COSMISM AND THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION. 

that it may have disappeared with him. In Boston, the survivors of 
the Twenty-eighth Congregation meet every Sunday in the spacious 
edifice gratefully erected to the memory of Theodore Parker. But, in 
this pulpit, — from which their founder formerly denounced the method 
and doctrines of Sensationalism, — the fathers of the church whom 
they quote and comment upon to-day are Spencer and Huxley, Dal- 
ton and Tyndall, George Lewes and Claude Bernard. This is a sign 
of the times. 

It is, indeed, the doctrine of evolution, in the form it has assumed 
from the recent generalizations of Herbert Spencer, which has rapidly 
become the dominant philosophy of Americans. Recently, one of 
the present editors of The Index, Mr. B. F. Underwood, stated that 
this doctrine was received by the majority of the Free Religious 
Association. In the United States, however, even more than in 
England, it has assumed the metaphysical form of Monism, which, 
while foreign to the old quarrel between the Materialists and the 
advocates of a spiritual philosophy, is as profoundly religious in its 
conclusions as it is faithful to the positive method in its premises. 

Its introduction into America is attributed to Professor John Fiske, 
a personal friend of Herbert Spencer, who, under the name of "Cos- 
mic Philosophy," set about developing the synthesis of evolution, by 
insisting upon the possibility of combinations of matter and force as 
much superior to humanity as humanity is to the crystal or the alga, 
and by emphasizing the existence of an indefinable Power " eternally 
and universally manifested in Nature." This doctrine rapidly formed 
a school as Cosmism, an appellation due to the happy blending of 
the positive method of Spencer with the naturalistic idealism of 
Dr. Strauss in its second phase, and one which is perhaps destined 
to become the name of a new faith. Already officially adopted by 
the free congregation at Florence, in Massachusetts, it is accepted by 
Mr. Potter, the minister of the New Bedford congregation, and the 
president of the Free Religious Association, as well as by the Rev. 
Minot J. Savage, the most advanced Unitarian minister of Boston. 

Mr. Potter is never weary of asserting that religion is essentially 
the expression of our relation to the universe: "Of religion, as thought, 
'the central idea is that of man's relation to the universe and to its vital 
forces ; of religion, as feeling, the central sentiment is that of obliga- 
tion, imposed on man by this tie of vital relation ; of religion, as 



COSMISM AND THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION. 215 

practice, the centre of action is man's effort to meet this obligation, 
and thus to put and keep himself in right relations with the universe 
and its vital powers. At the same time, the formula is only a state- 
ment of facts pertaining to man, which the strictest scientific thought 
must recognize. In whatever way the universe came into being and 
is sustained, man is in actual relation to it and its vital forces. Of all 
finite beings within the range of our knowledge, he is the culmination 
of its vital processes. It is also a fact that he feels himself under 
obligation to give service for what he has thus received, and that only 
that kind of conduct which shall put him in right and normal rela- 
tions with the universe of persons and things, of which he is a part, 
can satisfy this inward sense of obligation. "^ 

This is nearly identical with the definition of Fichte, who saw in 
religion " the synthesis of the Ego and the non-Ego." Mr. Potter, 
however, desires to remain faithful to the exclusive use of Positive 
methods, and though he admits there is in nature, as it reveals itself 
to us, the manifestation of an unknown and unknowable Power, he 
refuses to place this Power outside the universe, with all its possibilities 
and all its resources. On the other hand, he does not hesitate to 
invest the Power in question with a moral significance, or rather he 
identifies it with the moral law itself. Modern science, he says, has 
shown in vain that moral ideas are due to the reaction of the environ- 
ment in which the human organism is placed ; for since man, as the 
product of the universe, possesses the conception of morality and 
duty, these latter must certainly exist in the universe. 

It is clear that the Cosmos thus understood may become an object 
of real worship, and it would ill become us to cavil with Mr. Potter, 
who, when questioned on the nature of his beliefs, summed them up 
in these words : " Belief and trust in the universe. This is the corner- 
stone of our faith. If a new name were wanted for those who hold a 
faith thus grounded, why not call them Cosmians."^ 

The Rev. Minot J. Savage, again, the minister of an important 
Unitarian congregation in Boston, has made himself an eloquent and 

1. The Index of the 5th of January, 1882. 

2. See The Index of the 30th of June, 1881. In the opinion of Mr. Hinckley, 
the minister of the Free Religious Congregation at Florence and the present secre- 
tary of the Free Religious Association, the new God is the unknown and universal 
Power, acting by and in all things with superhuman intelligence and love. — 
The General Meeting of the Free Religious Association, May the 27th, 1881. 



216 COSMISM AND THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION. 

indefatigable apostle of evolution in his works, The Religion of Evolu- 
tion (1876), The Morality of Evolution (1880), and Belief in God 
(1881). And the members of the Free Religious Association who 
heard him, at their meeting in 1881, discourse upon the state of con- 
temporary morals, witnessed the curious spectacle of this Christian 
minister maintaining against a so-called Atheist, Mr. Felix Adler, that 
morals have for their foundation social utility, and for their origin the 
experience acquired by the race. Still, if Mr. Savage rejects the 
idea of an absolute and transcendent morality, he none the less admits 
that, in the midst of human variations as to the rules of conduct, the 
principle of a distinction between good and evil as well as the signifi- 
cance of the idea of duty represent among men " something constant 
and immutable as a rock in the midst of the waves." 

In his work on The Religion of Evolution^ Mr. Savage begins by 
showing that the progress of science has given the death-blow to 
almost all the conceptions of traditional theology. ^ It is, as he thinks, 
the theory of evolution which will henceforth bear sovereign rule in 
philosophy as well as in science. He does not hesitate to affirm that 
the marvellous hypothesis of Herbert Spencer serves to explain almost 
all known facts, without being in antagonism with any, and he goes so 
far as to characterize it as the greatest work the mind of man has ever 
performed. 

But if this philosophy be the last word of science, what does it 
leave us in the shape of religion ? Mr. Savage examines successively 
the modifications of thought which the acceptance of evolution would 
produce in the current conceptions of Christian theology and in 
metaphysics in general. Now, though this method tends to destroy 
the Biblical traditions" respecting the origin of the universe and the 
appearance of man, the anthropomorphic idea of the Deity, the belief 
in the Devil, the possibility of miracles, the acceptance of a special 
revelation, and the popular conception of heaven and hell, it leaves 
us, on the other hand, and even places on the most solid of founda- 
tions, our feelings of confidence and reverence in the presence of that 
mysterious Power which transcends all definition, but which reveals 
itself in all phenomena, — the consciousness of a close relationship 

I. The Religion of Evolution (Boston : Lockwood, 1876). See also his other 
works, The Morals of Evolution (Boston: Ellis, 1880); Belief in (7^^ (Boston: 
Ellis, 1881) ; Beliefs about Man (Boston : Ellis, 1882). 



COSMISM AND THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION. 217 

with all the members of the human family and even with all the forms 
of life in nature, — the hope of a future life and the necessity of com- 
plete submission to the moral law. 

From the fact that it excludes caprice and arbitrary intervention, 
the philosophy of evolution admits of the reconciliation of the prin- 
ciple of love with the reign of universal law in the manifestations of 
the universe. It is also the only doctrine which offers a satisfactory 
solution to the problem presented by the existence of evil. Evil, 
indeed, is shown to be merely a maladjustment in relation to the 
conditions of physical, moral and intellectual environment— that is, 
to the laws of the cosmic order. It may therefore be claimed that 
evil is an essential condition of progress, either as, when in nature it 
acts through the disappearance of the feeblest to the advantage of 
those best fitted to survive, or when, as with man, it presents itself as 
the corrective of ignorance and misconduct. " Even pain is only a 
signal marked danger, that is set up along the railways, at the switches 
and crossings of human life. . . . Pain is simply God saying : 
* Get out of danger' or ' Get up higher.'" 

But what becomes of Christianity in this scientific conception of 
religion? Mr. Savage points out that religion itself is subject to the 
law of evolution like all the other manifestations of our moral and 
intellectual activity. It matters not therefore that Christianity is the 
last and most perfect system of religion ; since it is a product of 
evolution it will be set aside by evolution. But it is only the super- 
annuated forms and the excrescences which' will be thus cast off by 
evolution ; this law or process does not effect what is in its nature 
permanent and universal. If the cosmogony, the dogmas, the cere- 
monies and the ecclesiastical organizations of Christianity are doomed 
to disappear, it is otherwise with the precepts in and through which 
Jesus identified religion with morality and the Supreme Being with 
universal life. Now, if these truths embody the essence of Christian- 
ity, whoever accepts them has a right to retain the name of Christian, 
and on this point the philosophy of evolution merely continues the 
work of Christ, which was misunderstood even by his first disciples. 

In a sermon preached before his congregation in 1 880,1 Mr. 
Savage speaks still more explicitly : — 

"All these religions may be grouped under three main classes. 

I. See his work, The Af orals of Evolution ^ p. 187. 



218 COSMISM AND THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION. 

Whatever their manifestation, however perfect or imperfect, they fall 
naturally into one of these three. In the first place there is Paganism, 
that is the worship of isolated, detached manifestations of the universe, 
whether of power, or beauty or what not. Then there is the Worship 
of Humanity. The highest specimen of this is Christianity; for 
Christianity, if you will think of it, is simply the highest type of the 
Worship of Humanity, because God himself in Christianity is con- 
ceived of in the image of the ideal and perfect man. Then there is 
another form of religion that may be called Scientific, or Cosmic. The 
object of its wonder, its awe, its admiration, is the universe considered 
as a universe j the unity, the mystery, the wonder, the power of this 
great Being of whom I have spoken, out oif whom we have come, and 
on whom we depend. I believe that the religion of the future, the 
ideal religion will combine in itself all these. It will take up into 
itself, the admiration, the beauty, the might that manifested itself in 
Paganism. It will feel kindly towards art and towards all the mani- 
festations of this mysterious life of nature, whether under our feet or 
over our heads. It will take up into itself all that is good and beautiful 
and perfect in Christianity, the worship of the ideal, loving, tender man. 
It will take up into itself that larger unity, of which both Christianity 
and Paganism are only parts, — this Cosmic worship of the universe." 

It is but right to add, that the Theory of Evolution is not accepted 
merely by Cosmians and Unitarians, who are beginning to make of it 
an essential feature of religion, but that it has conquered with a high 
hand pulpits more or less orthodox, in which case an attempt is some- 
times made to accommodate it to the demands of Revelation, while in 
other instances there is a loyal recognition of its incompatibility with 
the belief in an infallible Biblical record. Of the ministers who have 
not hesitated to accept it with this last corollory, may be mentioned, 
as the chief among the Episcopalians, the Rev. Heber Newton, of 
New York, and among the Congregationalists the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher. The latter does not hesitate to affirm- that to admit the 
truth of Evolution is to renounce the reigning theology. * 

I. See Mr. Beecher's article in The North American Review oi AugnsX, 1882. 
Being present with several other Protestant ministers at the banquet given to 
Mr. Herbert Spencer, at New York, on the 9th of November, 1882, Mr. Beecher 
made use of the occasion to propose a toast to the illustrious philosopher, and, in 
doing so, he once more affirmed the impossibility of reconciling Spencer with 
Calvin, without concealing his preference for the former. 



COSMISM AND THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION. 219 

Here, however, appears a phenomenon characteristic of the American 
mind, which, when it adopts the philosophy of the old world, imme- 
diately transforms it into religion, as already seen in regard to German 
Idealism. Religious genius, indeed, consists precisely in the power 
to perceive, under a special angle, those philosophical and scientific 
theories which are in appearance the most refractory to all meta- 
physical manipulation. It is this process of spiritualization which 
Mr. O. B. Frothingham in some measure described, when he said, on 
opening the third session of the Free Religious Association : " Vogt 
and Biichner profess Materialism, and demonstrate intelligence; Hux- 
ley talks of protoplasm, and sets us wondering at thought ; Moleschott 
tells us that light is the author of life, and bends our head before the 
uncreated Light." "And what wonder," wrote Mr. W. C. Gannett, 
in 1875, "that religious awe is deepening as science looks and speaks? 
Science to-day is making everything reverent to us by in- 
creasing its mystery. ... If science claims to be religion, tell 
her No ; but from wise lips she makes no such claims. If she only 
claims to be the giver of the known, tell her that you value her for 
that, but as much for the Unknown, that vision of the more-to-know 
which she everywhere suggests. To hint this latter is as distinctly her 
function as is discovery of fact. And the best of all — I love to repeat 
it — is that this vision of the Unknown is not in the heights, not in the 
depths, but in the common and the near, and in each and all things. 
That brings God's life so close ! The Power so absolute is here ! 
I do nothing without it. I am speaking, you are listening, by it ; we 
shall fall asleep and rise, or not rise, by it. The atoms and the in- 
stants are packed with heights and depths, bringing to everywhere the 
Presence which is Law and Right and Love."i 

It may be objected that this is all pure mysticism. But the thoughts 
which such language reveals are none the less important factors in the 
existing life and activities of what may be spoken of as American 
Rationalism. If the reader were to peruse the lectures and essays, 
summarized or reproduced every • week in The Index, he would be 
surprised, not only at the number and zeal of those who have adopted 
the synthetic side of evolution, but also at the resources they find in 

I. Proceedings at the Eighth Meeting of the Free Religious Association. 
Boston : 1875. 



220 COSMISM AND THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION. 

it for opening up new horizons to the religious sentiment, and for the 
satisfaction of it, even in its most exalted aspirations. It is true many 
of these works possess little, if, indeed, any value except as landmarks 
of the tendency of thought. But here a page by Abbot, Wasson, 
Gannett, or Savage, and there a lecture or sermon by Potter, 
Frothingham, or Chadwick might be pointed out which are as much 
marked by rigour of demonstration as by elevation of thought and 
poetical language. These latter, indeed, deserve the attention of all 
who are afraid that the progress of modern thought will lead to the 
destruction or even the weakening of those sentiments which give 
power and greatness to the human mind. 

It is worthy of remark that this movement corresponds with the 
views of Mr. Herbert Spencer himself, if we are to judge by the fol- 
lowing letter, which he wrote on the 9th of January, 1883, to the first 
and most enthusiastic of his religious interpreters in America, Mr. 
Savage : — 

" I have read with much interest your clearly reasoned and eloquent 
exposition of the religious and ethical bearings of the evolution 
doctrines. I rejoice very much to see that those doctrines are coming 
to the front. It is high time that something should be done towards 
making the people see that there remains for them, not a mere nega- 
tion of their previous ethical and religious beliefs, which, as you say, 
have a definite scientific and unshakeable foundation. I hope that 
your teachings will initiate something like a body of definite adherents 
who will become the germ of an organization. I have been long 
looking forward to the time when something of this kind might be 
done, and it seems to me you are the man to do it."i 

This letter, whose publication was authorized by Mr. Spencer, is all 
the more significant from the fact that Mr. Savage, in common with 
Mr. Graham and Matthew Arnold, sees in the Unknowable an ordain- 

I. See The Christian Register of the 29th of March, .1883. By a singular 
co-incidence, it was only a few weeks later that Dr. Putnam, one of the most 
authoritative representatives of the Conservative school of Unitarians in America, 
spoke of Mr. Savage as the ablest and most influential of their Radical preachers, 
adding that, however hostile his sermons and writings might be to much that many 
Unitarians regarded as essential, they seemed to him to reveal a more affirmative 
tone of thought and a more believing Christian temperament than those of Parker 
and the greater part of the Radical school. — (Dr. Putnam's address on American 
Unitarianism^ at the meeting of ministers in connection with the annual meeting 
of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association. The Inquirer of June 9th, 1883.) 



COSMISM AND THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION. 221 

ing Power who follows, if not a definite and foreseen purpose, at least 
a progressive aim, and that, though he refuses to see in the soul a 
distinct entity, he pronounces in favour of personal immortality. 

It only remains to add that, though it would be rash to predict that 
America will have the honour of giving the world a new faith, as some 
of its writers affirm, still, whether we take note of the Cosmians, the 
Transcendentalists, or those who occupy a position intermediate be- 
tween these two schools, or stop at the last phases of the Rationalistic 
movement, which began, as we have seen, in the revolt of Unitarianism 
against the dogmas of Predestination and the Trinity, we find every- 
where, as an affirmative element, side by side with free thought carried 
to its utmost limits, the perception of an absolute and unconditioned 
Being, who reveals Himself in nature under the infinite diversity of 
phenomena. 

Whether the object of this common faith be named the " Eternal 
One" with Emerson, or the "Cosmos" with Professor Fiske; the "God 
of Science " with Mr. Abbot, or the '* God of Evolution " with Mr. 
Savage ; the " Universe in all its possibilities " according to the defi- 
nition of Mr. Potter, or the " Power which slowly raises us towards 
perfection" with Mr. Gannett; or, indeed, "the Being behind all 
appearances," to use the definition of Mr. Adler, — it is, in a word, 
Pantheism which is flowing with full force through the advanced 
regions of religious thought in the United States. And thus the pre- 
diction made by Tocqueville, at a time when the Unitarian reform, 
then in full vigour, seemed rather to indicate a recrudescence of 
Monotheism, is being realized : " In democratic times the idea of 
unity besets the human mind ; it seeks its realization on all sides, and 
when it believes this has been found, gladly lies down in its arms and 
rests there. Not only does it come to see in the world a single 
creation with one Creator, but even this dual conception becomes too 
burdensome, so that it sets about enlarging and simplifying its thought 
by regarding God and the universe as parts of a single whole. "^ 

I. De la Dejnocratie en Ameriqzie. Paris: Levy, 1864. Vol. III., p. 50. 



PART III 



CHAPTER XL 



THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 

A recollection of Calcutta — Brahmoism — The Hindu religion and free inquiry — 
Philosophy among the ancient Brahmans — The idealistic Pantheism of the 
Vedanta — Intermediate Divinities — Syncretism and confusion of the Hindu faith 
— The Vishnuite Reformers and the doctrine of Bhakti — Attempts at reconcilia- 
tion, on the ground of the Divine unity, betw^een the Hindu and Mohammedan 
creeds — Kabir, Nanak, Akbar — Influence of European ideas upon the religious 
mind of India — Ram Mohun Roy : his eclectic doctrines and his preaching against 
idolatry — Organization of the Brahmo Somaj of Calcutta — Debendra Nath Tagore, 
the successor of Ram Mohun Roy — The controversy respecting the Monotheistic 
character of the Vedas — Mission of the four Pandits to Benares — Rejection of 
Vedic infallibility by the Brahmo Somaj — The drawing up of a Rationalistic con- 
fession of faith, the Brahma Dharma — Accession of Keshub Chunder Sen. 



It has been contended that pure Theism might suit exceptional 
temperaments, cold enough to rest satisfied with a vague religiosity, 
and too idealistic to do without it, but that it could never satisfy the 
aspirations of the masses, nor furnish means for the organization of a 
durable system of faith and worship. Still, the world has witnessed, 
for more than half-a-century, the constant progress of a religious 
movement which, though based exclusively on the principles of natural 
religion, presents all the characteristics of a positive faith : churches, 
priests, and worshippers. But it is in India where we must look for 
this. 

Having, on the last Sunday in August, 1876, walked along the 
Machoua-Bazar Street, in the native part of Calcutta, I entered a sort 
of neo-gothic chapel, which was already occupied by some three or 
four hundred natives, draped in those white and flowing shawls which 
form so striking a contrast with the bronzed complexion of the Ben- 
galese and suggest the fine effect of the ancient toga. There were 
scarcely more than a dozen women to be seen, who were seated in 
one of the aisles, but certain rustlings behind the gauze veil which 
concealed the gallery rightly led me to suspect that the general 
audience was not so exclusively comprised of the stronger sex. 
Immediately in front of the entrance stood a vedi^ — a small marble 

Q 



226 THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 

platform, raised to a height of several steps and surrounded by a 
balustrade, — where the ofificiating minister, in a simple muslin sur- 
plice and squatting in Oriental fashion, was waiting for the hour to 
commence the service. I could have believed myself in some native 
Protestant congregation had it not been for the entire absence of all 
Christian symbolism. On the other hand, there was neither the 
perpetual fire of the Guebres nor the grinning idols of the Hindu 
Pagodas ; and, though the building, as a whole, possessed the austere 
simplicity of a Mosque, its architecture presented none of the details 
which characterize the edifices devoted to the worship of Allah. In 
fact, the God v/orshipped here was neither the Divinity of the Chris- 
tians nor the Guebres, neither the Deity of the Hindus nor the 
Mussulmans : it was the God of a new religion, which claims to be 
a fusion of all the faiths of India, and even of the entire world, in a 
religious synthesis based upon the universal revelation of reason and 
conscience — the God of Brahmoism. 

The sect, or rather the religious school, of Brahmoism is of rela- 
tively recent origin, since it was only in 1880 that it celebrated the 
fiftieth anniversary of its foundation by the Rajah Ram Mohun Roy. 
Still, it already possesses more than 170 congregations, some thirty 
organs of the native press, many thousands of adherents, — among 
whom figure some of the most eminent men of the native society, — 
and, finally, a whole religious and philosophical literature, both in 
English and in the various local dialects. In spite of its opposition 
to the tendencies of orthodox Christianity, it has succeeded in secur- 
ing the attention and sympathy of all religious parties, even among 
the English. These are no longer the days in which Victor Jacque- 
mont thus described, in a letter from Calcutta, the sentiments of the 
Anglo-Indians towards the noble and worthy Ram Mohun Roy : — 
*' The honest English execrate him because he is, they say, a fright- 
ful Deist"! 

I. The principal historian and most ardent champion of Brahmoism in Europe 
to-day is Miss Sophia Dobson Collet, who according to her own avowal, accepts 
Trinitarian Christianity, a circumstance which speaks as well for the breadth of her 
ideas as it does for the value of her testimony, in favour of a'form of worship "com- 
bining Evangelical piety with Unitarian theology. " In addition to several small 
treatises on the history of Brahmoism, Indian Theism (1870), Brahfno Marriages 
(1871), Miss S. D. Collet has published every year since 1876 an Annual, called 
The Brahmo Year-Book, which embodies the most complete and circumstantial 
details of the Theistic movement in India. 



THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 227 

There is no need for astonishment that such a movement should 
have sprung out of Hinduism. The religion of the Brahmans has 
always been on good terms with free inquiry and intellectual progress. 
Even before the rise of Buddhism, philosophical speculation had 
attained to considerable eminence among the Aryans of the Punjaub 
and the Ganges. So far from opposing this tendency, the sacerdotal 
class gave it the right of citizenship in the Vedaic teaching, on condi- 
tion that criticism, though perfectly free in the matter of dogma, should 
respect the nominal infallibility of the Vedas, the separation of caste, 
and the privileges of the Brahmans ; and though, at a later time, they 
struggled against the doctrine of Buddha, it was not because this 
doctrine tended to Atheism, but because it proclaimed the equality of 
mankind, and denied the necessity of a priesthood. 

Then were seen to develope, in the Brahmanic schools, the most 
diverse and even the most contradictory systems of thought. Some 
sought an explanation of the universe in an atomic theory which 
suggests the doctrines of Epicurus and Haeckel. Others taught a 
more or less disguised Evolutionary Atheism. The philosophy how- 
ever, which at length gained the predominance was the system of the 
Vedanta, an idealistic Pantheism which had previously existed in 
outline in certain hymns of the Veda.^ According to this doctrine, 
which is summed up in the word advaita (non-dualism), God is the 
sole real existence and the world exists only in him ; all the pheno- 
mena which appear to us as real are only an illusion of our senses. It 
will be seen, therefore, that if the idea of the divine personality seems 
new in India, it is not the same with what concerns the belief in the 
unity of God. 

This abstract conception of the divinity was but ill adapted to the 
worship of the masses who remained faithful to the most striking and 
living figures of the ancient gods. But the Pantheistic philosophy of 
the Vedanta lent itself completely, Hke its Western equivalent, neo- 
Platonism, to the maintenance of subordinate gods, regarded as inter- 
mediate between man and the Absolute. The Brahmans, therefore, 
succeeded easily enough in accommodating the objects of the popular 
faith within the frame-work of their theology ; and this is true of those 
most removed from the Vedaic tradition, since they were regarded as 
the forms or personified energies, or indeed as the incarnations or 

I. Rig Vdea X. 90. See Monier Williams's Indian Wisdotn^ 3rd edit., p. 24. 



228 THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 

Avatdras.oi the supreme Divinity. It was on this principle that the 
Brahmans made of Buddha an incarnation of Vishnu, in order to 
facilitate the absorption of Buddhism, and that even to-day certain 
Vishnuites accept Christ as the last incarnation of their god.^ 

This elasticity and eclecticism may be said to form the essential 
features of the Hindu religion. There has never, indeed, been a 
god really accepted by the people to which India has closed the doors 
of its pantheon ; there is not a religious idea, coarse or sublime, which 
it has not accepted with equal readiness at some moment or other 
of history. And since, moreover, it has never been able to resolve 
upon the rejection of an acquired belief, but has confined itself to the 
superposition of its new conceptions,^ there has resulted from this a 
confused and odd jumble, which shocks in the highest degree our 
European conceptions, but which none the less serves to explain the 
prodigious vitality of Hinduism. "Starting from the Vedas," says 
Prof Monier Williams, in the introduction to his Indian Wisdom^ "it 
ends by appearing to embrace something from all religions and to pre- 
sent phases suited to all minds. It has its spiritual and its material 
aspect, its esoteric and its exoteric, its subjective and objective, its 
pure and its impure. It is at once vaguely Pantheistic, severely 
Monotheistic, grossly Polytheistic and coldly Atheistic. It has a side 
for the practical, another for the devotional and another for the 
speculative." - 

At the close of the Vedaic period, the only way of salvation lay in 
the observance of minute rules and in the fulfilment of the more and 
more complicated rites which the Brahmans had established. The 
re-action against excesses of the sacredotal spirit produced Buddhism 
on the one hand ; while on the other, it led the very defenders of the 
old religion to admit the value of renunciation, contemplation and 
ecstacy as the supreme means of attaining to union with the Divinity, 
the absorption of the individual soul in the Divine Essence. But 
this concession did not prevent the momentary triumph of the Budd- 



1. This fact is mentioned by Professor Monier Williams in his little treatise : 
Hinduisi7i. London, 1880, p. 108. 

2. Prof. Max Miiller, who finds it difficult to speak with severity of the Hindus, 
has pleaded extenuating circumstances in relation to this process in his Origin and 
Development of Religion studied in the light of the Religions of India. The 
eminent Indianist specially insists on the lesson of practical toleration which Europe 
might learn from it. 



THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 229 

hists who were, in this particular, more logical than their rivals. It 
was at this time that there arose a third school, better adapted to 
respond to the aspirations of the masses. Their doctrine was that of 
Bhaktiy already present in outline in the poem of the Bhagavad-Gita, 
and which has chiefly prevailed among the worshippers of Vishnu. 

From the twelfth to the fifteenth century a series of reformers, such 
as Ramanuja, Madhava, Vallabhacarya and Chaitanya, without con- 
testing the value of sacrifices or of asceticism, placed, by the side of 
and above these two religious practices, faith and love (hhakU) towards 
the Divinity, considered in some one or other of his principal incar- 
nations. According to this doctrine, the worshipper, in order to reach 
beatitude, must gradually realize the following states : — ist, the con- 
templation of God j 2nd, voluntary subjection ; 3rd, sympathy ; 4th, 
filial affection; and, 5th, passionate love. To facilitate this increasing 
exaltation, the reading of the old Vedaic Mantras was replaced by 
songs and dances and by the waving of lights and the sound of in- 
struments before the images of the god ; the prayers were henceforth 
to be in the language of the people, and the distinctions of caste were 
proscribed from the interior of the sanctuaries or even during the 
entire period of religious festivities. Chaitanya, above all, insisted 
upon the importance of these practices, in order to attain to com- 
munion with Krishna. Tradition relates, indeed, that he drowned 
himself when in one of his ecstacies and whilst he was bathing near 
Puri. 

The greater part of these reformers admitted the personality of God, 
and attributed to him an existence distinct from physical nature, as 
well as from the individual or finite soul.^ But the theory of incar- 
nation, which they allowed to keep its place in their respective systems, 
was destined to re-open the door to all the abuses of idolatry which 
have continued to characterize the Vishnu sects down to the present 
day. It was not, therefore, from that direction that a purification of 
religion could arise. ^ 

In the meantime, Brahmanism, while scarcely freed from the diffi- 
culties it had to encounter in Buddhism, found itself in antagonism 
with a new adversary, whose zeal for proselytizing could be abated 
neither by fire nor sword. Still it was in vain that the zealots of 

I. Monier Williams, Indian Theistic Reformers^ in the Xlllth Volume (2nd 
Series) of the Royal Asiatic Society. 



230 THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 

Islamism massacred the priests, enslaved the worshippers, and de- 
spoiled and sacked the temples of Hinduism ; they could not over- 
throw the religious and social edifice of native civilization, — it may 
even be asserted that they borrowed more from it than they gave 
to it.i The chief result of this contact of the rigid Monotheism of. 
the conquerors with the elastic Pantheism of the conquered, was that 
there sprang up, in the minds of certain adherents of each of the two 
faiths, an idea of mutual approach towards reconciliation, if not of an 
actual fusion, on the ground of their common principle — the belief 
in one God. 

Among those who sought to give practical effect to this idea, with 
a view to diminish idolatry, we find in the 15th century, a disciple of 
the philosopher Ramananda, the weaver Kabir, who attacked at 
one and the same time the authority both of the Koran and the 
Vedas, in order to substitute for it a purely spiritual worship. He 
disavowed, moreover, all distinction of caste and said that all who 
loved God and did good were brethren, whether they were Hindus or 
Mussulmans. His preaching drew around him numerous followers 
attracted indifferently from the two faiths whose vital principles he 
claimed to teach, and the legend by which is memory is enshrined in 
the popular song of Bhakta-mal, relates this characteristic detail, that 
at his death Mussulmans and Hindus disputed the possession of his 
body, the latter desiring to burn and the former to bury it, according 
to their respective rites -, but that when the coffin was opened there 
was found nothing whatever in it but flowers. It appears, however, 
that a part of these was burnt at Benares and the ashes depositedan 
the Chapel of Kabir-Chaura, which still attracts the devotees of Hin- 
dustan; while the remainder was buried at Mogar, where the reformer 
died, and the monument raised above the spot is visited yearly by 
numerous pilgrims at the time of the annual fair. More than once 
in history contemporary religious systems have been seen to damn the 
same heretic ; this is perhaps the only instance in which two hostile 
faiths have been seen to canonize the same apostle. 

A disciple of Kabir, Nanak Shah, likewise sought to fuse the two 
great religions of his country into a single faith, with no othef dogma 

1. Monier Williams, Modern India, 2nd Edition (London : Triibner; 1878). 
Garcin de Tassy, Mejjioire stir les Particidariiis de la Religion Mussubnane dans 
Vinde (Paris, 2nd Edition, 1869). 



THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 231 

than belief in the unity of God, in the necessity of moral purity and 
in toleration towards other forms of faith, together with an absence of 
all ceremonial rites except ablutions and prayers. Such was the origin 
of the Sikhs, who formed, at first, a purely religious association. 
Finally, the celebrated Akbar, Grand-Mogul as he was, conceived of 
the organization of a new faith, under the striking name of " Divine 
Monotheism," in which, while preserving certain forms of Islamism, 
he introduced practices borrowed from the Hindus, the Guebres, the 
Christians and even from the Jews. 

Unfortunately the time was not ripe for such a magnificent syn- 
thesis. The sect of the Kabir-panthis which, moreover, never secured 
a wide extension, became identified with the worship of Rama, an in- 
carnation of Vishnu, and to-day it has even added the worship of its 
gourous or spiritual chiefs. The Sikhs, after being transformed into a 
military confederation by the Mussulman persecutions, gradually re- 
opened their temples to the idols and superstitions of Hinduism. 
Finally, the syncretism of Akbar was destined to scarcely extend 
beyond the walls of his palace, and the only vestige of it which has 
remained, is, perhaps, to be found in the eclectic architecture of the 
cruciform temple in the town of Brindaban, which was dedicated to 
Krishna by the rajah Man-Singh, the friend of Akbar. This edifice 
possesses a gothic nave lined with Hindu pillars, which are sur- 
mounted by Moorish arches. 

The introduction of European civilization gave a new impulse to 
the speculative mind of the Hindus. It must not be forgotten that, 
side by side with Christianity, the English have carried into India the 
arts, sciences and methods, in short the whole literary and philo- 
sophical heritage of Europe. Hence, although Brahmoism seems to 
have sprung from Hindu traditions by a gradual and original evolu- 
tion, it is easy to discover the traces of European influence in the 
three men who have, in a sense, personified the successive phases of 
the movement; Ram Mohun Roy, Debendra Nath Tagore and 
Keshub Chunder Sen. 

Ram Mohun Roy was born in 1774,^ at Radhnagar, and belonged 
to a Brahmanic family specially devoted to the worship of Vishnu. 

I. In 1780 according to Garcin de Tassy ( Histoire de la Litteraiure Hindouie 
tt Hindoustanie. Paris, 2nd Ed., Vol. II., p. 348). 



232 THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 

From his infancy he was remarkable for his devotion to the idol of the 
paternal house. But being sent early to the Mussulman school at 
Patna to learn Arabic and Persian, it was not without effect that he 
found himself in contact with Semitic Monotheism, and he had 
scarcely returned to his family, when, at the age of sixteen, he drew 
up a protest against the practices of Hindu idolatry. His father, who 
occupied a distinguished position in the district of Burdwan, judged 
it prudent to send him from home again, in the hope, perhaps, that 
contact with the world would cool the glowing zeal of the young re- 
former. But the latter simply took advantage of his travels to devote 
himself exclusively to the study of comparative theology, at first in 
the principal temples of India and afterwards in those of Tibet, where 
the independence of his criticism brought him into collision with the 
adherents of Buddhism. When, after an absence of four years, he 
re-appeared in his native town, not only had he fully adopted the 
principle of the divine unity, but what is more, he had resolved that 
no obstacle should deter him from combatting the superstitions of his 
fellow-countrymen. 

"After my father's death in 1803," he himself wrote in a letter sub- 
sequently published in the AthencBum^ " I opposed the advocates of 
idolatry with still greater boldness. Availing myself of the art of 
printing, now established in India, I published various works and 
pamphlets against their errors, in the native and foreign languages. 
The ground which I took in all my controversies was not that of op- 
position to Brahminism, but to a perversion of it, and I endeavoured 
to show that the idolatry of the Brahmins was contrary to the practice 
of their ancestors, and the principles of ancient books and authorities 
which they profess to revere and obey."^ He had courageously set 
himself to learn — in addition to Persian, Arabic, Sanscrit and English 
— Hebrew and Greek, in order that he might be able to obtain from 
original sources a knowledge of the principal religions which have 
played a part in history. Prof Monier William^ speaks of him as the 
first really earnest investigator in the science of comparative theology, 
which the world has produced. ^ 

These researches, by adding still greater amplitude to his religious 

1. See The AihencBum of London, for October 5, 1833. 

2. Indian Theistic Reformers^ in the Xlllth Vol. (2nd Series) of the Royal 
Asiatic Society. 



THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 233 

horizon, had inspired him with the project of founding a faith on the 
simple belief in the unity of God and of a future life. But, being 
disinherited by his father, he found himself reduced to an acceptance 
of the humble position of diwan with the English collector of taxes 
at Rangpoor, and it was not till 1814 that he was able to settle at 
Calcutta in order to devote himself there to the spread of his doctrine. 
This doctrine was drawn directly from the Vedanta. Still, of the two 
propositions which constitute the basis of the Vedantine philosophy, — 
the unity of God and the illusion of individual existence, — he attached 
himself almost exclusively to the first, compiling the Vedas in order 
to furnish himself with arms against the Polytheism of his contem- 
poraries. He cannot, therefore, be called a Monotheist to the extent 
that this term is applied to the believers in a distinct and personal 
God, such as the Jehovah of Moses or the Allah of Mohammed. 
But, while remaining wholly faithful in this respect to the Vedaic 
tradition, he seems to have made the essence of religion consist 
exclusively in the recognition of the Divine, as this principle is 
formulated either by the Pantheism of the Brahmanas or by the 
Monotheism of the Bible or the Koran. Hence he felt an equal 
veneration for all who had taught him — Moses and Jesus, Myaga and 
Mohammed. This eclectic tendency is specially noticeable in his 
work on The Precepts of Jesus ^ the Guide to Peace and Happiness 
(1823), in which he renders homage to the moral value of Chris- 
tianity, while he at the same time rejects the divinity of its Founder. 

It has been said that Ram Mohun Roy delighted to pass for a 
believer in the Vedanta with the Hindus, for a Christian among the 
adherents of that creed, and for a disciple of the Koran with the 
champions of Islamism. . The truth is that his eclecticism equalled 
his sincerity. As a curious illustration of his influence, it is said of 
him that he converted to Unitarianism a Baptist missionary who 
rendered great service to the cause of education in India, the Rev. 
W. Adams. In his turn, however, it was from the religious meetings 
held by Mr. Adams in Calcutta that he conceived the idea of organiz- 
ing a Theistic form of worship for the use of the Hindus. 

He had already grouped his adherents into an association entitled 
Atniiya Sabhd (Spiritual Society). In 1829, he introduced into it the 
celebration of a divine service divided in four parts : the recital of 
Vedic texts, the reading of an extract from the Upanishads, together 



234 THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 

with a sermon and hymns. The new sect was not slow to become 
known by the name of Brahma Sabha or Brahmo Somaj (the Society 
of God). As the reader is aware, according to the Hindu theology, 
Brahma is not only the first person of the Trinity but he is also, as 
the neuter of his name, Brahman, serves to indicate, the absolute and 
eternal Being whose creative, preserving and destructive agencies are 
respectively personified by Brahma, Vishnu and Siva. 

In 1830, the Brahmo Somaj installed itself in a house which its 
founder had purchased for that purpose at Calcutta. The deed of 
gift says that " No sermon, preaching, discourse, prayer or hymn is to 
be delivered, made or used in such worship, but such as have a 
tendency to the promotion of the contemplation of the Author and 
Preserver of the universe, to the promotion of charity, morality, piety, 
benevolence, virtue and the strengthening of the bonds of union 
between men of all religious persuasions and creeds." One portion 
of this building was reserved for the use of the Brahmans in their 
reading of the esoteric texts, which in the Vedas cannot be communi- 
cated to the other castes. 

Unhappily, Ram Mohun Roy embarked shortly afterwards for 
England, where he was sent with the title of rajah in order to make 
certain demands on behalf of the Grand-Mogul at the Court of St. 
James. He had long cherished the idea of visiting Europe, where 
he was already known by reputation. The upper classes in England 
gave him the kind of reception which they know so well how to ofler, 
altogether apart from political considerations, to eminent men of 
every country and race. He had no sooner disembarked than he 
became the Hon of the season in London, and yet this flattering at- 
tention did not diminish in the slightest degree the ease and the 
natural modesty of his character. Miss S. D. Collet, who remembers 
having caught a glimpse of him at this time, states that he won the 
sympathy of every one by the affability of his manners, no less than 
by the cultivation of his mind; and Garcin de'Tassy, who met him 
the following year at Paris, describes his personal appearance in these 
terms : " His physique answered to his fine moral qualities ; he 
possessed a noble and expressive physiognomy ; his complexion was 
extremely bronzed, almost black ; but his regular nose, his brilliant 
and animated eyes, his broad forehead and the beauty of his features 
rendered his countenance remarkable. He was six feet in height and 



THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 235 

well proportioned. His dress was habitually blue ; but he wore over 
it a white shawl, which was rolled upon his shoulders and reached 
down to his waist in front. He enclosed his hair with a turban after 
the manner of the Mussulmans of India." ^ 

His mission being accomplished, he was preparing to return to 
India, in order to make use of the experience he had acquired in 
England for the advancement of the reform he was carrying out, 
when, exhausted by his exertions and perhaps a victim to the climate, 
he fell ill and died at Bristol on the 27th September, 1833. His 
remains rest in the cemetery of that town, beneath a monument built 
in the Oriental style by his disciple and friend, Dwarka Nath Tagore, 
who came himself to die in England some years later. 

Deprived of its leader, the little Church of the Brahmo Somaj 
languished for about a dozen years, and seemed at last on the point 
of dying out, when it placed the young Debendra Nath Tagore at its 
head. This latter, who was born in 181 8, was the son of Dwarka 
Nath Tagore, just mentioned as the friend of Ram Mohun Roy, and 
he belonged to the Brahmanic clan of Piralis. When scarcely twenty 
years of age, he had already founded an " Association for the Search 
of Truth " (Tativa Bodhini Sabhd), which proposed to itself " to sus- 
tain the labours of Rajah Ram Mohun Roy, by introducing gradually 
among the natives of this country the Monotheistic system of Divine 
worship inculcated in the original Hindu Scriptures." The Associa- 
tion met weekly in the house of the elder Nath Tagore, to discuss 
religious questions ; once a month it celebrated a Divine service, in 
which hymns were sung and passages read from the Uphanishads. 
It had even begun to train missionaries to preach, throughout India, 
the need of reform in the national worship, when, in 1843, it incor- 
porated itself into the Brahmo Somaj, in imitation of Debendra. 
Together with its pecuniary resources, it brought also to this institution 
its habits of intellectual activity ; so that — thanks to the new element — 
the work of Mohun Roy soon resumed a progressive course. Still, 
even in 1847, the avowed Brahmoists did not number a thousand. 
At that date, however, a crisis occurred which seemed to presage their 
dispersion, but which became, on the contrary, the chief cause of 

I. Garcin de Tassy, Histoire de la Litterature Hindouie et Hindousianie. 
Paris, 1870. 2nd Ed., Vol. II., p. 151. 



236 THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 

their subsequent rapid success among the enlightened classes of the 
country. 

Ram Mohun Roy had included in his organization all who admitted 
the unity of God, on the sole condition that they should keep up no 
connection whatever with Polytheistic doctrines and practices. Still, 
in point of fact, the Brahmo Somaj was a simple Hindu sect, since 
its members admitted the infallibility of the Vedas. The prayers and 
hymns composing its entire liturgy were profoundly impressed with 
the Vedantic spirit, which manifested itself in the guise of continual 
allusions to the dogmas of metempsychosis and those of identity with 
the divine essence. Now nothing was more opposed than this to the 
tendencies of Debendra Nath Tagore and his friends, who — possibly 
owing to the influence of a more complete European education — 
had reached the conception of a personal God distinct from nature. 

The new comers who had rapidly attained to a position of pre- 
eminence in the Brahmo Somaj, sought at first the confirmation of 
their views in the Vedas themselves. It has been said that anything 
and everything may be proved from the Bible, an assertion which 
would apply with still greater force to the Vedas. The Vedas^ — or 
more correctly the Veda, that is science— are, in the theology of the 
Brahmans, regarded as the direct breath of God, which was com- 
municated to the RtcMs, the bards of the Aryan migration, and trans- 
mitted by them from mouth to mouth, down to the time when the 
Brahmans, their legitimate successors, judged it desirable to fix the 
truths of this divine revelation in writing. In reality, the Vedas form 
a collection of innumerable liturgies and theological treatises com- 
posed, as a rule, by unknown authors, the most recent of whom lived 
at the dawn of our era, and the most ancient at the time of the first 
Aryan invasions of India. It will be easily understood that among 
literary fragments so varied in origin and date, traces are to be found 
of all the currents of thought which have successively or simul- 
taneously contributed to the formation of Hindu beliefs. These 
range from the worship of the deified elements of nature by the naive 
genius of the Aryans, up to the most abstract connections of Panthe- 
ism or even of pessimistic Atheism, developed within the shadow of 
the temples by several ages of philosophical elaboration — from the 
gross superstitions with which the invaders were innoculated in their 
contact with Fetishism and foreign idolatries, up to the minute cere- 



THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 237 

monies introduced by the ritualism of the Brahmans, in order to give 
a sacred sanction to the religious and social subjection of the enslaved 
castes — the whole being intensified in its effect by the presence of a 
profound and sincere piety, revealing itself in mystic aspirations 
towards an ideal Being and suggesting at times, as Edgar Quinet re- 
marks, the personal and living God of the Monotheistic religions.^ 

This tendency is so marked in certain hymns of the Rig- Veda that 
the majority of Sanscrit scholars thought at first they had discovered 
in them, not the natural evolution of the Hindu mind towards the 
unity and simplicity of the First Cause, but the last trace, as a sort 
of feeble echo, of some primeval Monotheistic religion, which had 
existed anterior to the ancient Naturalism. 

In the most recent portions of the Vedaic literature, moreover, 
passages, possessed of a moral and philosophical elevation, that the 
loftiest metaphysical system of our epoch would not repudiate, are to 
be found side by side with the most absurd and degrading theories. 
Even when we include the Puranas — that supplementary Veda styled 
the popular Bible of the Hindus — there is no part of this vast sacred 
literature which does not constantly recognize, behind the changing 
and transparent physiognomy of its gods, that Being whom one pas- 
sage names " the powerful Lord, immutable, holy, eternal, and of a 
nature always true to itself, who reveals himself as Brahma, Vishnu 
or Siva, the creator, preserver or destroyer of the world." 

At the time when Debendra Nath Tagore and his friends resolved 
to controvert even passages from the Vedas themselves, they began by 
calling in question, not the infallibility of the sacred texts, but the 
fidelity of the partial versions in their own and their opponents* 
possession. And here it will be well to bear in mind that the Vedas 
comprise thousands of isolated passages ; that the knowledge of their 
most important parts had been the exclusive monopoly of the Brah- 
manic caste ; that European science had not as yet made the true 
sense of the Hindu Scriptures common property, even in India itself; 
and that, finally, they were written in a dead language, Sanskrit, but 

I. We may cite, as examples, the well-known hymn to Varuna {Rig-VMa, II., 
28), which bears the impress of so intense an aspiration after moral purity and so 
profound a sense of sin that M. Pillon has called it a Vedic Kyrie eleison ; or, 
further, the hymn, **To what God shall we sacrifice?" {Rig-Veda^ X., 121); and 
the hymn on the origin of the universe {Rig- Veda, X., 129). 



238 THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 

little known even to native theologians, beyond the limits of a few 
centres specially devoted to the study of sacerdotal matters. Hence 
the Brahmo Somaj, decided, at the suggestion of Akhai Kumar Datta, 
the editor of the Tattvabodhini Patrika^ to commission four young 
pandits to copy, at Benares itself, the four Vedas, of which the sacred 
town of Brahmanism alone possessed a copy claiming to be complete 
and authentic. 

This undertaking lasted two years, and when its result was com- 
municated to the Brahmo Somaj, no one could avoid the saddening 
conviction that, side by side with sublime precepts, the Vedas em- 
bodied passages forming a justification for the grossest superstition, — 
in short, a collection 'of dogmas utterly irreconcileable with the prin- 
ciples of Monotheism. 

The infallibility of the Scriptures was now courageously thrown 
overboard, and the Brahmo Somaj breaking with the tradition of 
Hinduism, as well as with the entire notion of any specially revealed 
religion, became a purely Theistic Church — the first, perhaps, except 
the Unitarian, which has ever acquired a serious importance in the 
world. Debendra Nath Tagore caused it to adopt under the name of 
Brahma Dharma " the rule of Theism," a confession of faith, which 
without falling into an exaggerated dogmatism, summed up the 
elementary principles of all worship wkhin the bounds of natural 
religion : the Unity and personality of God ; the immortality of the 
soul ; the moral efficacy of prayer \ and the necessity of repentance 
to ensure restoration from the effects of evil-doing, i Up to this time, 
the most important part of their worship, that is to say, the recital of 
the sacred texts, had taken place among the Brahmans with closed 
doors, and the adherents of any other caste were only admitted to 
hear the sermon and join in the hymns. Henceforth, however, the 
Brahmo Somaj made no distinction between its members, and it was 

I . See The New Dispensation and the Sddhdran Brahmo Somdj, by the pandit 
Sivanath Sastri. Madras, i88i,p. lo. — The c^t;(f«a«/, or constitution of Brahmoism, 
which the members were to sign, embodied the four following propositions : — 
(i) In the beginning, God was alone, and he has created the universe. (2) God is 
intelligent, infinite, benevolent, and eternal ; he governs the universe, he is omni- 
scient, omnipresent, the refuge of all, without body, immutable, unique, without an 
equal, all-powerful, self-existent, and above all comparison. (3) It is by venerating 
him, and by this alone, that we can attain to supreme beatitude in this world and 
in the next. (4) To love him and do the things that please him constitute the 
worship we owe to him. 



THEISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA. 239 

recompensed for this by the numerous accessions which it received, 
not merely in Calcutta but also in the provinces. 

Still such is the persistence of social prejudices that the greater part 
of the Brahmoists remained faithful to the prescriptions of caste 
sanctioned by the ancient faith, and notably in relation to the im- 
portant question of marriage. Even more, men of excellent parts — 
a state of things not peculiar to India and the Brahmo Somaj — 
continued to practice in their families, for the sake of appearance, 
ceremonies which they denounced as contrary to reason and the 
dignity of man, in the meetings of the Brahmo Somaj. All this 
happened because the convictions of the Brahmoists, as yet, lacked 
that fervour which is ready for every sacrifice and if badly directed 
too often ends in intolerance, but which is none the less indispensable 
to the success of every great religion or social reform. The Brahma 
Dharma was above all the formula of a philosophy ; it was reserved 
for Keshub Chunder Sen to make of it the gospel of a religion. 



CHAPTER XII 



THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 



Keshub Chunder Sen — His influence on the religious activity of the Somaj of 
Calcutta — Gradual abandonment of the distinctions of caste — Conservative and 
Liberal Brahmoists — Keshub's controversy with Debendra Nath Tagore on the 
social bearing of Brahmoist reform — Schism of the Brahmo Somaj into the Adi 
Soma) and the Somaj of India — Exuberance of religious life among the neo- 
Brahmoists — The Brahmostabs — Inauguration of the new Mandir, or Temple — 
Keshub's efforts to secure a recognition of the validity of Brahmoist marriages, 
the suppression of premature unions, the legal consent of the bride, &c. — 
Institution of civil marriage as optional by the Native Marriage Act of 1872 — 
The foundation by Keshub of the Indian Reform Association — Participation of 
this Society in all the movements for the regeneration of India — Establishment 
of schools, emancipation of women, repression of drunkenness — Means of propa- 
gandism and rapid spread of Brahmoism in the provinces — Institutions charac- 
teristic of the different Somajes. 



Keshub Chunder Sen was born in 1838, and his family belonged to 
the Vaidya caste. His father who had filled important posts in the 
government of Bengal, was a votary of Vishnu, and was celebrated 
for the brilliancy of the festivals held in his house in honour of the 
god. It is from these surroundings, which were anything but favour- 
able to Monotheistic tendencies, that the young Keshub sprang as 
Ram Mohun Roy had previously done ; but attendance at the Anglo- 
Indian College of Calcutta had the same influence upon his convic- 
tions as the teaching of the Mohammedan College at Patna had pro- 
duced upon the religious ideas of his predecessor. When hardly 
twenty years old, Keshub had grouped around him a certain number 
of young men who were eager, like himself, for instruction in Western 
literature and philosophy. It was then that one of the Brahmo 
Somaj pamphlets, falling by chance into his hands, revealed to him 
the existence, in his own country, of the ideal Church of his imagina- 
tion. His adhesion to it was not delayed, and, like Debendra Nath 
Tagore, he was able to secure the allegiance of the small group who 
were already accustomed to look up to him as their spiritual guide. 

" There are two sorts of Theism," says one of the most faithful 
disciples of Keshub, the Baboo Protab Chunder Mozoumdar. "One 



242 THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 

of these is what is ordinarily termed Natural Religion — the faith that 
is formed in man's mind by the action of natural phenomena and 
laws upon its faculties and instincts. This may be termed Philo- 
sophical Theism and it is therefore assailable by Philosophy. The 
conception and principles of this kind of Theism are, to a certain ex- 
tent, changeable, inasmuch as man's ideas on natural facts and laws 
are subject to change. The second division is Revealed Theism — 
the deep spiritual religion produced by the action of God's spirit 
within man's soul. This religion is unchangeable and unassailable ; 
it is beyond the reach of science and ordinary philosophy. 
The first Theism is man seeking God, the second Theism is God 
seeking man."i Now it is this second form which Keshub insisted 
upon in the Bramho Somaj, attaching himself to what Miss S. D. 
Collet names the Augustinian side of religion, that is to say "the 
passionate thirst for God, the strong sense of sin, the low estimate of 
the merit of actions and of mere morality, the yearning to sink self 
in the fathomless ocean of divine love." 

Keshub possessed, moreover, the true temperament of a reformer. 
Energetic and swayed by conviction, endowed, too, with eloquence 
which, while clear and persuasive, was at the same time coloured and 
captivating, he joined to the prestige of talent and knowledge that 
innate ascendency which furnishes the key to all hearts and con- 
sciences. Equally versed in the native dialects and in the English 
language, he combined the gravity and sweetness of Oriental manners 
with a conventional simplicity and an activity of mind altogether 
European. 

If I may refer, to the impression which he made upon me a few 
years later, he was assuredly, of all the personages whom I had an 
opportunity of getting a glimpse of in India, the one who seemed to 
me to best personify his generation and the change wrought by the 
action of European ideas upon the tendencies of Hindu society. 
Even his adversaries never denied his being an exceptionally en- 
dowed man. His great defect, as will be seen further on, was 
perhaps that of believing and saying this himself. 

As the result of his influence, there soon appeared, in this Ration- 
alistic Church, an intensity of religious life which seems everywhere 

I. Indian Mirror of the 25th of April, 1875. 



THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 243 

€lse to have remained a monopoly of the sects and to be the outcome 
of their miraculous theology. The meetings of the Brahmo Somaj 
became more frequent and were better attended ; a number of new- 
comers were attracted by the reputation of the young preacher and 
retained by the seductive charm of his words. A true revival took 
. place, and, as a first consequence, it gave to the members of the 
Brahmoist Church the energy needed for a definitive break with the 
practices of Hinduism. 

Debendra Nath Tagore preached by example in the month of 
July, 1 86 1, when he allowed the marriage of his own daughter to be 
celebrated without any of the idolatrous rites required by the tradition 
of the Brahmans. In the following year he renounced the domestic 
idol which he had up to that time tolerated, under his roof, and, on 
the initiative of Keshub, he discontinued the use of the sacred cord 
symbolic of caste, during divine service. 

But Keshub wished to go still further in this direction, and the very 
day on which he was chosen an assistant minister of the Somaj of 
Calcutta, he ignored the fact that he was a Vaidya by birth and went 
with his wife to dine at the table of Debendra Nath Tagore, who, in 
the Brahmanic hierarchy, was only a Pirali. Now, a Brahman may 
associate with persons of a lower clan, or even of an inferior caste, for 
the widest variety of objects, but he cannot share in their meals with- 
out incurring an excommunication, which makes an alien of him in 
his family, deprives him of his goods, and drives him from his home. 
In vain, too, would he seek to attach himself to the group from asso- 
ciation with which his loss of rank had been occasioned : — birth alone 
can give caste. He would fall, therefore, beneath even the soudras 
into that degraded herd of outcasts who no longer figure in the 
minutely adjusted hierarchy of Hindu society. 

Formerly, it was with difficulty that the least infraction of the 
etiquette of caste, even if involuntary, could be atoned for at the 
price of long penitence and enormous fines paid to the priests. But 
English rule has not existed in vain in India. The sympathy shown 
to the assistant minister of the Brahmo Somaj in his disgrace by the 
most enlightened of his fellow-citizens, soon made it evident that for 
the first time perhaps since the social insurrection of Buddha, revolt 
against the prescriptions of caste had become possible in Hindu 
society. Some time afterwards, when Keshub had fallen dangerously 



244 THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 

ill, his family repented of the course they had taken, and agreed to 
reinstate him in his patrimonial rights. 

Scarcely restored to health, Keshub proposed to make the abandon- 
ment of the Brahmanic cord obligatory upon the ministers of the 
Brahmo Somaj. Debendra Nath Tagore, although he had personally 
set an example of this kind, refused to make it an indispensable con- 
dition for the exercise of the sacred office. Hence there resulted a 
lively controversy, in which the Brahmoists were to be seen divided 
into two camps under the respective generalship of the two ministers. 
Both parties seemed more or less agreed on questions of principle. 
But the Conservatives led by Debendra Nath Tagore, whom so many 
innovations were beginning to alarm, maintained that the Brahmo 
Somaj should confine itself, as far as possible, to reforms of a purely 
religious character, that it was necessary to take into account the 
existing customs and that the complete repudiation of social distinc- 
tions was contrary to the traditions as well as to the national spirit of 
the Hindus. To this agreement the progressive party replied with 
Keshub, that it was impossible to separate religious from social re- 
forms, that before God all class distinctions should be put aside, and 
that a Church, feeling itself in possession of truth, should proclaim 
it in its entirety with neither scruple nor hesitation. 

This controversy reached a climax, when Keshub undertook 
to officiate at the marriage of a Vaidya with a young widow of a 
different caste, after which the whole wedding party, including the 
minister, partook of the same repast. The scandal this caused as- 
sumed such proportions, even in the Brahmo Somaj, that Keshub, in 
despair of gaining a majority in favour of his ideas, voluntarily quitted 
the association with some hundreds of adherents, and in the following 
year completed the schism by founding a new Church under the title 
of Bharathharsia Somaj or Brahmo Somaj of India, in contradistinc- 
tion to the Brahmo Somaj of Calcutta, which subsequently became 
known by the name of Adi (the old) Somaj. • 

This new society was not intended to be merely the rival of the 
Church of Debendra Nath Tagore in Calcutta itself; it aimed, more- 
over at the organization of all the Brahmo Somajes of the country 
into a confederation, of which it was to be the centre. " We see 
around us," said Keshub in his inaugural address delivered on the 
nth of November, 1866, "a large number of Brahmo Somajes in 



THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 245 

different parts of the country for the congregational worship of the 
one true God, and hundreds upon hundreds of men professing the 
Brahmo Faith; we have besides, missionaries going about in all 
directions to preach the saving truths of Brahma Dharma; books 
and tracts inculcating these truths are also being published from time 
to time. To unite all such Brahmos and form them into a body, to 
reduce their individual and collective labours into a vast but well 
organized system of unity and co-operation — this is all that is thought 
to be accomplished. . . . We must endeavour to realize, so far 
as it is in our power, the true idea of the Church of God." 

In common with Presbyterian Christians, the neo-Brahmos would 
accept no head but God himself; still Keshub was none the less their 
real chief, under the title of secretary of the Bharatbharsia Somaj 
and minister of the Calcutta Congregation. 

Masters of their own actions the neo-Brahmos, as was to be ex- 
pected from the leadership of Keshub, gave themselves up to an 
exuberance of religious life which their minister did not seek to 
moderate, but merely to regulate by the institution of a ritual in con- 
formity with the spirit of the new organization. 

The weekly service, which was fixed for the Sunday to correspond 
with the regular stoppage of business introduced by the English into 
the habits of India, was henceforth to consist of prayers, hymns, a 
sermon and readings, the latter being borrowed indifferently from the 
Vedas, the Old and New Testament Scriptures, the Koran and the 
Zend A vesta, according to the pleasure of the minister. ^ This was 
supplemented by a " family service," which each Brahmo could use 
daily in his own house. As to the ritual previously in use for the 
ceremonies of initiation, marriage, crermition, Jd^karma (thanksgiving 
after the birth of a child) and ndvikaram (the choice of a name), 
they were simply modified by the elimination of formulas not in 
harmony with the programme of the reforming party. The ceremony 
of shrddha, a funeral service closely allied to the theory of metem- 
psychosis, was completely remodelled in keeping with the doctrines 
professed by the Brahmos on the future destiny of the soul. Finally 

I. Here is the Bharatbharsia Somaj Order of Service: — i, Hymn; 2, Invoca- 
tion; 3, Hymn; 4, Adoration; 5, Silent communion; 6, Prayer in common 
or with responses ; 7, Prayer for universal good ; 8, Hymn ; 9, Reading from 
sacred books ; 10, Sermon; ii, Prayer; 12, Benediction; 13, Hymn. 



246 THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 

Keshub instituted a series of brahmostabs (festivals of the Lord) 
which recur at stated periods and last an entire day.^ 

These festivals appear to have exercised an influence which is only 
to be explained by the contagious nature of even the most rationalistic 
form of mysticism. " The change produced in certain persons who 
were present on the occasion of these Brahmostabs is truly astonishing, "^ 
wrote Protab Chunder Mozoumdar in 1868. "The humility, the hope, 
the prayerfulness, reverence, love, faith, and joy, that flow in celestial 
currents at such times, catch men's souls by a sort of holy contagion. 
. , . . Men and women are similarly affected ; new converts are 
every time brought in, old converts are regenerated and refreshened. 
Those Brahmos who desire to know what it is to see and feel God (we 
speak with the humble reverence of sinners) should come and attend 
one of the Brahmostabs. "^ Sometimes, at the close of the ceremony, 
the worshippers formed into a procession, and, with the minister at 
their head, paraded the streets of the native quarter, singing hymns 
to the glory of the one and only God. 

A part of these innovations, if we are to believe the pandit Sivanath 
Sastri, were due to the better understanding which was reached at the 

I. The following is a description of one of these festivals, the Bhadrostab of 
1 87 1, taken from the Indian Mirror of the 22nd of August, 187 1, and it at least 
proves the fervour of those vi^ho took part in it : — 

Precisely at- six o'clock a hymn vsras sung in the upper gallery of the Mandir to 
announce the solemnities of the day. Others follovi^ed with the harmonium ac- 
companiment, and thus the singing continued from hymn to hymn till the com- 
mencement of the service which, including the sermon, lasted from 7 to 10 o'clock^ 
A part of the congregation then withdrew for refreshment, but the remainder sur- 
rounded the Vedi to ask the minister for an explanation of various points of his 
sermon. At noon, when the meeting was again full, four pandits came forward 
and recited Sanscrit texts in succession. At one o'clock, the minister gave an 
address on the following four points : — (i) The Veda is inferior to the true Scrip- 
ture, in which the eternal God reveals himself; (2) The sage must everywhere 
reject error and retain truth ; (3) It is the spirit or essence of all Scriptures, great 
and small, which should be sought, for this is truth ; (4) To find God, we must 
turn to the Scriptures, to the sages and to conscience. Then came several philo- 
sophical theses and religious expositions by their authors. Hymns, meditations 
and prayers in common brought the congregation to close upon 7 o'clock, when 
seven new Brahmos were to be initiated by a special ceremony. This, with a con- 
nected sermon, did not last less than two hours and the meeting, if we are to believe 
the chronicler, showed no signs of weariness after these fifteen hours of continuous 
devotion, but separated singing that it had not even then had enough : "The heart 
wishes not to return home." 

2. Indian Mirror oi the ist of July, 1868. 



THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 247 

commencement of the Bharatbharsia Somaj between the party led by 
Keshub and the school of Bhakti^ principally represented in Bengal 
by the followers of Chaitanya. The neo-Brahmos borrowed from the 
latter, for instance, the hymns which they sang in their Sankirtans^ 
and though these lyrical compositions were doubtless freed from all 
Polytheistic allusion, they bore the impress of that sweet mysticism 
which is at once the charm and the peril of the Hindu genius. "The 
metres are peculiar and usually vary in the same hymn," says Miss 
S. D. Collet, "and the wild recitative-like tunes are such as sorely 
task a European ear to apprehend and retain ; but however ineffective 
they may sound to us, a very great effect is produced by them in India, 
especially when sung in unison by hundreds of believers, all warmly 
moved by the sentiments expressed. "^ 

The Mandir, or Church, which the Bharatbharsia Somaj built for 
itself was not finished until 1869. The opening service took place on 
the 29th of August, in the presence of a very large and enthusiastic 
audience. Keshub read on that occasion the following declaration, 
which I reproduce in full, because it contains a clear exposition of his 
views at the time : — 

" To-day, by Divine grace, the public worship of God is instituted 
in these premises, for the use of the Brahmo community. Every day, 
or at least every week, the one only God, without a second, the Perfect 
and the Infinite, the Creator of all, omnipresent, almighty, all-knowing, 
all-merciful, and all-holy, will be worshipped here. 

" No man or inferior being or material object shall be worshipped 
here as identical with God or like unto God or as an incarnation of 
God, and no prayer or hymn shall be chanted unto or in the name of 
any except God. No carved or painted image, no external symbol 
which has been or may hereafter be used by any sect for the purpose 
of worship or the remembrance of a particular event, shall be pre- 
served here. No creature shall be sacrificed here. Neither eating 
nor drinking nor any manner of mirth or amusement shall be allowed 
here. No created being or object that has been or may hereafter be 
worshipped by any sect shall be ridiculed or contemned in the course 
of the Divine service to be conducted here. No book shall be acknow- 
ledged or revered as the infallible word of God ; yet no book that has 

I. See some translations of these hymns in The Brahmo Year Book for 1877* 
page 50. 



248 THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 

or may hereafter be acknowledged by any sect to be infallible shall be 
ridiculed or contemned. No sect shall be vilified, ridiculed or hated. 
No prayer, hymn, sermon or discourse, to be delivered or used here, 
shall countenance or encourage any manner of idolatry, sectarianism 
or sin. Divine service shall be conducted here in such spirit and 
manner as may enable all men and women, irrespective of distinctions 
of caste, colour and condition, to unite in one family, eschew all man- 
ner of error and sin, and advance in wisdom, faith and righteousness. 
The congregation of the Brahma Mandir of India shall worship God 
in these premises according to the rules and principles hereinbefore 
set forth. Peace ! Peace ! Peace ! " 

The Bharatbharsia Somaj had soon made their organization the 
rallying-point of the great majority of the Somaj es which already ex- 
isted in the provinces, and the number of their adherents became in 
a short time greater than that of the original Association. There was, 
however, a legal obstacle which deterred many from the public adop- 
tion of Brahmoism, even after they had accepted its doctrines. The 
Indian law, for instance, sanctioned only religious marriages — that is, 
marriages regularly celebrated according to the rites of some recog- 
nized religious body. What was there binding, therefore, in unions cele- 
brated without the formalities required by the traditional religion? 
The importance of this question was soon seen from a decision given 
by Mr. T. H. Cowie, the Attorney-General of India, to the effect that 
Brahmoist marriages were not valid and that the children born of 
such unions were illegitimate. The Brahmos immediately drew up a 
petition, praying the Government to place their new ritual on a com- 
mon footing with the Hindu rites. 

Nothing was more just than this, nothing simpler in appearance. 
Hence, in 1868, notwithstanding the reserve and the slowness with 
which the English Government ventures to interfere with the develop- 
ment of national traditions and customs, above all among its Asiatic 
subjects. Sir H. Sumner Maine, who presided over the department of 
justice in the Vice-regal Cabinet, introduced a Bill which exceeded 
even the request of the petitioners by making civil marriages optional 
among the natives of India — that is to say, the recognized religious 
bodies retained the right to celebrate legal marriages, but it was lawful 
for every one, Christians excepted, to marry, without any religious 



THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 249 

ceremony, before a civil functionary or registrar appointed by the 
Government. 

The project naturally called forth from the orthodox of every creed 
protestations similar to those with which we have long been familiar 
in Europe. Parsees and Brahmans forgot their differences to de- 
nounce in common the danger to which religion, the family and 
society were about to be exposed if their co-religionists were authorized 
to do without priestly intervention in the most solemn act of life. In 
the presence of this agitation, the Government withdrew the Bill, and 
it was not till the commencement of 187 1, after an interval of two 
years, that the successor of Sir H. Sumner Maine, Mr. Fitzjames 
Stephen, proposed a new measure, "The Brahmo Marriage Act," 
which was drawn up with the conditions demanded by the Brahmos. 
By thus seeking to give validity to the ritual of Keshub Chunder Sen, 
the Government was thereby sanctioning certain reforms of the greatest 
importance for India. 

In spite, for instance, of the formal text of the Vedas, which re- 
cognize a certain independence in women, these have fallen, in con- 
sequence of the Mussulman invasions, into a condition of subjection 
which leaves them no preference in the choice of a lord and master. 
Brahmoism, which has done so much for the emancipation of the 
Hindu woman, could not pass over such a disregard of the equality 
of the sexes, and, in the reform of its ritual, it at once introduced 
into the marriage service the condition, hitherto unheard of, that the 
consent of the woman had been " freely given before God, the All- 
powerful." Another innovation, contained in the proposed measure 
and made equally at the suggestion of Keshub Chunder Sen, who 
had long been preaching against the scourge of premature marriages, 
fixed a minimum of 18 years for young men and 14 for girls. Finally, 
the Bill introduced monogamy into the Hindu code, by making it 
obligatory upon all those who might avail themselves of the provisions 
of the new Act. 

Although restricted to a special sect, the new Bill met with the 
same opposition as the preceding one, and it may be mentioned as a 
characteristic detail, that the members of the Adi Somaj were among 
its bitterest opponents. Two thousand persons professing to be 
Brahmos went so far as to petition the Legislative Council of India, 
praying that the measure might be rejected as useless, excessive, and 



250 THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 

dangerous. A middle course between the proposal of Mr. Stephen 
and that of Sir H. S. Maine was therefore adopted. The Legislative 
Council struck the name of the Brahmos from the Bill and made it 
applicable, under the title of " The Native Marriage Act," to " persons 
who do not profess the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Mohammedan, 
Parsi, Buddhist, Sikh or Jaina religion,''^ — a negative enumeration 
calculated to re-assure the adherents of the different religious bodies 
against the abandonment of their altars by sceptical or impatient 
bridegrooms. 2 

The very vehemence of the opposition which the neo-Brahmos had 
been compelled to overcome in obtaining legal sanction for their 
marriages, could not fail to advance their cause, since it brought them 
under the notice of all who were seeking an agency for social and 
religious regeneration, as Keshub himself had formerly done. Imme- 
diately after his return from the journey he made to England, with 
four disciples at the end of 1870, the minister of the Bharatbharsia 
Somaj founded at Calcutta the Indian Reform Association, " with a 
view to promote the moral and social reform of the natives of India." 
Open to all the natives without distinction of race or creed, but com- 
posed chiefly of Brahmos, it was divided into five sections under the 
following heads : (i) The amelioration of the lot of women ; (2) edu- 
cation; (3) cheap literature; (4) temperance; (5) philanthropical 
activities. 

From its commencement, this society was to be found at the head 
of all the movements set on foot to secure the moral and material re- 

1. A somewhat numerous sect in the East of India who profess doctrines 
bordering on those of Buddhism. 

2. Here is the text of the declaration which the new law, promulgated on the 
22nd of March, 1872, and requires to be signed by the contracting parties in the 
presence of the registrar and three witnesses : — "I, A. B., hereby declare as follows : 
(i) I am at the present time unmarried ; (2) I do not profess the Christian, Jewish, 
Hindu, Mohammedan, Parsi, Buddhist, Sikh or Jama religion ; (3) I have com- 
pleted my age of eighteen (or fourteen) years; (4) I am not related to C. D. (the 
other contracting party) in any degree of consanguinity or affinity which would, 
according to the law to which I am subject or to which the said C. D. is subject, 
render a marriage between us illegal; (5) and (for cases where the legal age or 
majority is not attained) the consent of N. M., my father (or guardian as the case 
may be) has been given to the marriage between myself and C. D. and has not been 
revoked ; (6) I am aware that if any statement in this declaration is false, and, if 
in making such statement, I either know or believe it to be false, or do not believe 
it to be true, I am liable to imprisonment and also to fine." (See The Brahmo 
Year Book for 1879). 



THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 251 

generation of India. The education of women and the suppression 
of intemperance seem to have specially engaged its attention. In 
1 87 1, it founded on behalf of the native women, an adult school and 
also a training college, to which was attached a girls' elementary 
school, to serve as a means for the acquisition of experience. By 

1875, t^^ students of the normal college had formed among them- 
selves a mutual instruction society, which arranged for periodical 
lectures under the direction of Keshub, and published its transactions 
in the organ of the Association, the Bdmabodhini Patrika^ which was 
widely circulated among the families of Bengal. Another educational 
institution, the Bengal Ladies' School, was opened at Calcutta in 

1876, to prepare governesses for the examination, which had been 
organized by the Government ; and among the students who at once 
gave in their names, were four widows. Together with these schools 
Keshub founded in 1882, the Bhdrat Assani^ a sort of boarding house 
to serve as a home for native women desirous of living in common 
under the protection of the Brahmo Somaj. 

These institutions, which were imitated in many particulars by the 
local congregations, have had as their immediate result, not only the 
improved condition of women among the disciples of Brahmoism, 
but their existence has, moreover, indirectly provided the sex with a 
solid vantage ground in the struggles they have to carry on against 
the dominant religions of India. Miss Collet states in her Year Book 
for 1876, that the Brahmoist women rival the originators of the move- 
ment, in their activity and enthusiasm. Now, the more a reforming 
movement comes into collision with national customs and traditions, 
the more necessary is the co-operation of the feminine element, to 
enable it to overcome the resistance of the social environment. It 
is by woman's agency that nev/ ideas take possession of the family, 
and it is through the family that the regeneration of society com- 
mences. The Brahmos have seized upon a truth here, which is too 
often overlooked in European countries. 

Meanwhile the Indian Reform Association was also applying itself, 
with no less success, to a search for a remedy against the habit of in- 
temperance, which is a recent vice in India. Before the arrival of the 
English, it is an undoubted fact that the Hindus and the Moham- 
medans vied with each other in sobriety, which is, moreover, enjoined 
by the nature of the climate. With European civilization the taste 



252 THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 

for fermented liquors unhappily introduced itself, and for the last third 
of a century drunkenness has been extending through India like a 
deadly leprosy. 

The Association began its work by establishing a journal, Mad na 
Garal ? (Wine or Poison ?) and by organizing lectures for inculcating 
abstention frdtn strong drinks. But these efforts not having produced 
sufficient results, Keshub, after making an inquiry himself in all parts 
of Bengal, presented a petition to the Governor-General, signed by 
16,200 Bengalese, in which he requested the Government to place re- 
strictions on the sale of fermented beverages. The prayer of the 
petitioners was granted, on the revision of the general tariff in 1876, 
when the duty on the importation of wines and spirits was consider- 
ably raised ; besides this, in the following year, a special measure was 
passed by the Legislature, which restricted the number of wine shops, 
prohibited the clandestine sale of alcoholic drinks, declared public- 
house debts unrecoverable by legal means and forbade dealers in such 
beverages to accept goods as a pledge of payment. And finally the 
Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal was intrusted with the power to 
transfer to the justices of the peace, in any locality he might think 
fit, the right to withdraw the license from public-houses.^ 

These examples show how largely the Brahmos had become an 
embodiment of the reforming spirit of native society, in the eyes of 
the Anglo-Indian Government. The late Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, 
did them ample justice in this respect when on his departure from 
Calcutta in 1876,2 he publicly expressed, to their secretary, the lively 
sympathy with which he regarded their moral and social labours, 
" though, of course, theologically he differed from them in opinion." 

Meanwhile the religious proselytism of Brahmoism went on hand- 
in-hand with its social activities. People came from all parts to hear 
the fervent and inspired utterances of Keshub, who, on certain occa- 
sions, drew together audiences numbering from two to three thousand 
persons. At the same time, innumerable tracts, containing prayers, 
sermons, lectures, and moral or religious dissertations, were distributed 
all over the country with that indefatigable prodigality, the secret of 
which our reformers had borrowed from the Bible Societies of England. 

1. TJie Brahmo Year Book (ox iSy 6. 

2. The vice-regal sceptre of India changes hands every few years, and two 
viceroys — Lord Lytton and Lord Ripon — ^have completed their term of office since 
Lord Northbrook's rule came to an end. — Translator. 



THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 253 

But it was above all by means of missionaries that Brahmoism 
extended its conquests in the interior of the peninsula. These 
missionaries, who are trained in a theological institute established for 
that purpose, aim at maintaining the faith of their own people and at 
extending their doctrines among others. Every year, towards the 
time of the principal Brahmostab, they meet in conference at Calcutta, 
and set out thence to the very extremities of India, following a route 
traced out beforehand. Visiting the congregations already in existence, 
they also seek everywhere to found new ones. Their families they leave 
behind, at the expense of the community, so that they may be free to 
devote themselves exclusively to the interests of the Church. Stopping 
wherever there is any hope of a sympathetic or even of an attentive 
hearing, they preach the good word in the public squares, beneath a 
tree, on the edge of a pond, in the midst of a fair or even on the roof 
of a house. In some instances, they request one of their co-religionists 
to assemble a few friends in his own house, where they worship with 
closed doors. As soon as they have in anyway brought together a 
nucleus of followers, they organize them into a regular congregation, 
which begins at once to collect funds for building a mandir. 

It must not be supposed that the Brahmans, or, speaking generally, 
the orthodox Hindus, are slow to create every kind of embarrassment 
for them. More than once, especially in Bengal, the populace have 
been seen to interrupt and break up their meetings ; they have even 
taken possession of and burnt the building after maltreating the con- 
gregation, as was the case at Cagmari in 187 1. But these acts of 
violence, which are repugnant to Hindu manners, seldom occur and 
never happen a second time in the same place. The opposition shows 
itself more frequently in the shape of those social excommunications 
which the law is powerless to foresee and to repress. Some years ago, 
for instance, an Association was formed in Bengal, the members of 
which pledged themselves to maintain no social relations whatever 
with the adherents of Brahmoism, even though such persons should be 
their own nearest relatives. In some localities the shop-keepers, bar- 
bers and others refused to accept the Brahmos as customers. These 
facts, however, are not specially applicable to India alone, for they 
are to be seen manifesting themselves every day in the Catholic vil- 
lages of Belgium, at the expense of the Free-thinkers domiciled there. 
Still, persecutions of this kind, whether direct or indirect, were power- 



254 THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 

less to arrest the progress of Brahmoism, and during the year 1876 
alone the number of Somajes increased from 108 to 128.^ 

All these congregations, scattered as they are throughout India, 
seek more or less to imitate the parent congregation. Speaking 
generally, the influence exercised by each Somaj depends less upon 
the number of its members than upon their zeal and activity. Small 
congregations, especially in remote districts, often become ardent 
centres of proselytism, sending missionaries in all directions .and 
creating libraries and even schools for the use of the neighbouring 
populations. 

Here is Miss Collet's description of the principal institutions which 
characterize a Somaj in its full development : — 

A. — Religion, (i) Common worship at least once a week, but 
generally at shorter intervals ; (2) Religious festivals on special 
occasions ; (3) The use of an order of service in celebration of 
births, marriages and funerals; (4) A series of religious dis- 
cussions; (5) A Theistic library; (6) An organization for spread- 
ing the principles of Brahmoism, carried on by means of 
missionaries, pamphlets and a journal. 

B. — Philanthropy, (i) Distribution of alms ; (2) Dispensaries for 
the sick; (3) Associations for checking intemperance, early 
marriages, &c. 

C. — Education, (i) Various agencies for the instruction of women, 
such as lectures, special publications, ladies' associations, &c. ; 
(2) Schools for both sexes; (3) Night schools for the working 
classes.2 

When I visited Calcutta at the end of 1876, the question of holding 
a general assembly was under consideration. It was proposed that the 
conference should consist of delegates from all the congregations 
affiliated to the Bharatbharsia Somaj, and the proposition was carried 
into effect on the 23rd of the following September, under the presi- 
dency of Keshub. The basis of a representative organization for the 

1. Of this number 61 were in Bengal, where some towns possessed two. At 
Bengalore, a few officers of the native camp had established a military Somaj with 
a school for the daughters of the soldiers. At Lahore, the wife of the minister had 
commenced a congregation consisting exclusively of women, in which she herself 
officiated. 

2. Preface to The Brahnio Year Book for 1880. 



THE SOCIAL REFORMS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 255 

regulation of the general interests of the neo-Brahmo Church was 
agreed upon by this assembly, and it was arranged to hold another 
meeting the following year to complete the work thus commenced. 

But this arrangement was made without any knowledge of the cir- 
cumstances which were about to endanger, if not the cause of 
Brahmoism, at least the unity of the Bharatbharsia Somaj and the 
prestige of its founder. It is often in the hour of greatest prosperity 
that Churches, like States, find themselves shaken to their founda- 
tions, by an excessive application of the principles which have formed 
their strength and greatness. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



THE ECLECTICISM OF THE BRAHMA DHARMA IN ITS 
STRUGGLE WITH HINDU MYSTICISM. 



Theodicy and Morals of Brahmoism — Its relation to the schools of Vedantine 
Philosophy and German Idealism — Rationalistic Eclecticism of the Brahma 
Dharma — Mystical theories of Keshub Chunder Sen on the mission of great 
men and the nature of inspiration and prayer — Asceticism in the Bharatbharsia 
Soma) — Keshub's letter to Miss Collet — The Bairagya movement — Keshub's 
sacerdotal tendencies — The opposition they called forth — Proposed marriage of 
Keshub's daughter to the young Maharajah of Couch-Behar — Dissatisfaction 
caused among the Brahmos by the immature age of the young couple — Inci- 
dents of the wedding at the Court of Couch-Behar — Keshub's concessions to 
the nuptial practices of Hinduism — Attempt of his Brahmo opponents to bring 
about his deposition at Calcutta — Founding of the Sadharan Somaj — Programme 
of the new Brahmoist Church — Its rapid development. 



Both as theodicy and morals Brahmoism springs, at once, from the 
Vedantine Idealism, which is still the dominant philosophy of the 
enlightened Hindus ; from German Idealism, which the writings of 
Carlyle and Coleridge have popularized even in India ; and, at a later 
date, from English Theism and American Transcendentalism. In 
imitation of this latter the Brahma Dharma declares that " intuition 
is the root of Brahmoism." It consequently admits of two methods 
for the attainment of truth. It asserts that the genuine scriptures 
given by God are two in number : the book of Nature and the ideas 
implanted in the mind of man. *' The wisdom, the power, the good- 
ness of God are written, it declares, in letters of gold upon the face 
of the universe : we know God by the study of his works. In the 
second place all fundamental truths are met with in the spiritual con- 
stitution of man, as primordial, self-evident convictions." 

The God of Brahmoism is the Ultimate Being, infinite in Time and 
Space, the Creator and Preserver of all things, who is both just and 
merciful. Brahmoism formally rejects the doctrine of Incarnation. 
We read in the Brahma Dharma for instance : That God never makes 
himself man by assuming the human form. His divinity dwells in all 
men though it specially manifests itself in some. Thus Jesus Christ, 
Mohammed, Nanak, Chaitanya and all the great religious reformers 



258 THE ECLECTICISM OF THE BRAHMA DHARMA 

of different epochs, have rendered eminent services to their fellows in 
the name of religion, and possess a claim upon the gratitude and love 
of all. They were neither absolutely holy nor infallible, they were 
only gifted men. 

Brahmoism distinguishes between four kinds of duty: (i) Duty 
towards God : faith, love, worship, the practice of virtue, &c. ; (2) 
duties to ourselves : the preservation of health, the pursuit of know- 
ledge, holiness, &c. ; (3) duties in relation to our fellows : truth, 
gratitude, the love of our neighbour, justice, the fulfilment of our 
engagements, benevolence in the most extended sense, &c. ; (4) duties 
towards the inferior animals, such as kind and humane treatment. 

Brahmoism is naturally an eclectic and universal religion. The 
Brahma Dharma proscribes the distinctions of caste and declares that 
all men are brethren. The Brahmos consider it distinct from all other 
religions and yet the essence of all. It is not hostile to other creeds ; 
it accepts whatever truth they contain, and rejects only their errors. 
Being based upon the nature of man it is therefore permanent and 
universal. It is confined to no special epoch or race ; so that men of 
every age and land who profess this natural form of religion are 
Brahmos. 

As to the soul — and it is here above all that Brahmoism becomes 
radically separated from Pantheistic doctrines — God created it, as all 
other material or immaterial things, but though it has thus had a 
beginning it will have no end. God alone is eternal ; the soul is only 
immortal. On the dissolution of the organism which it animates, it 
will quit the terrestrial regions, with its virtues and its vices, in order 
to indefinitely carry forward in other spheres the struggle for truth and 
perfection. It is in this sense we are to understand the teaching of 
the Brahma Dharma, that " the Paradise of the Brahmo consists in 
the society of God." 

With a conception thus elevated of our relation to God, the "pro- 
cess of salvation," is necessarily the pursuit of the ideal by the search 
for the true and the practice of the good. Still Brahmoism would 
not be a religion, if it did not inculcate the necessity of some form 
of worship, with a view to bringing its adherents into communion 
with the Absolute — a form of worship which it makes to consist 
entirely of love, adoration and prayer, and not of ceremonial ob- 
servances. It is above all to individual and spontaneous prayer that 



IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH HINDU MYSTICISM. 259 

it assigns an important place in its liturgy, not with a view to obtain 
a miraculous modification of the laws of nature or even to render 
unnecessary the expiation of sins actually committed, but in order to 
procure for the sinner, thus purified by repentance, the moral strength 
needed to avoid faUing back into his former evil ways. 

To this scheme of theology, which is as simple as it is natural, 
Keshub attached theories that appear to be an unconscious re-action 
of Hindu mysticism against the rigidity of the Rationalistic tendencies 
developed in Brahmoism by its contact with European philosophy. 
As early as 1866, in a sermon on "Great Men," which excited no 
little attention in Calcutta, he sought to prove that, over and above 
conscience and external nature, there is a third channel through which 
God reveals Himself to the human mind : it is the influence of men 
providentially raised up, who thus specially represent "God in History." 
The benefactors and reformers of the human race may therefore be 
regarded, he urged, as incarnations of the Divine, not in the common 
acceptation of the term, which lends a human form to the Infinite 
Being, but in this sense : that God, who is present in all men, reveals 
Himself more fully in certain superior natures. Let the East and the 
West appreciate and honour each other's great teachers, he said, and 
" thus hostile Churches and the dismembered races of mankind shall 
be knit together into one family in the bonds of faith in the common 
Father and universal gratitude and esteem towards their elder brothers, 
the prophets.'' This was a very elevated conclusion, but from the 
development which he gave to his definition of providential men, 
Keshub made of them a special class, intermediate agents between the 
masses and God, who were supposed to be superior to the apparent 
laws of the moral universe and infallible in their opinions when under 
the influence of divine inspiration. 

But by what signs are the chosen of Providence to be recognized ? 
Keshub gives us no clue whatever to this ; he merely explains that 
the prophetic office may become the mission of any one who, through 
fervency and continuance in prayer, knows how, in a sense, to lay 
hold of the Divine. In a discourse on " Inspiration," preached in 
1873, for instance, on the occasion of the 43rd anniversary of the 
Brahmo Somaj, he said : — 

" Prayer and inspiration are two sides of the same fact of spiritual 
life. Man asks and God gives. The spirit of man kneels and is 



260 THE ECLECTICISM OF THE BRAHMA DHARMA 

quickened by the spirit of God. The cause and the effect seem 
hardly distinguishable, and in the reciprocal action of the human and 
the Divine spirits there is a mysteriotis unity. Hardly has man opened 
his heart in prayer when the tide of inspiration sets in. The moment 
you put your finger in contact with fire, you instantly feel a burning 
sensation. So with prayer and the consequent inspiration. The effect 
is immediate, necessary, inevitable. . . . Observe the process : 
God acts upon the soul and the soul re-acts upon God, and there is 
re-action again and again. That response stirs the deepest depths of 
the heart, and we pour forth our feelings and sentiments of love and 
gratitude, and consecrate our energies unto God. These are again 
sent down with greater blessings and increased power, so that the 
heart is more than ever quickened and sanctified. Thus we gradually 
ascend from the lowest point of communion to its higher stages, till 
we gradually attain that state of inspiration in which the human will 
is wholly lost in the divine. Blessed he who has realized this but 
once in his life-time. . . . Nay, the inspired soul goes further. 
It does not rest satisfied with having cast off the old and put on the 
new man ; it aspires to put on divinity. With the profoundest rever- 
ence, be it said, that it is possible for man, when inspired, to put on 
God. For then self is completely lost in conscious godliness, and 
you feel that you can do nothing of yourself, and that all your holy 
thoughts, words and actions, are only the breathings of the Holy 
Spirit. So the great prophets of earlier times thought and felt. They 
felt strong in God's strength and pure in God's purity, and to Him 
they ascribed all honour and glory, "i 

It is easy to see in the author of this language, so interspersed 
with ecstatic pictures and ardent invocations recalling the visions of 
God among the mystics of the Middle Ages, a descendent of that 
contemplative and exalted race which deified prayer under the name 
of Brahma and subjected the will of the gods to the incantations of 
men. It is doubtless true that Keshub avoids falling into Pantheism, 
which he condemns for having " dishonoured God and ruined man," 
by sapping the foundations of morality and true religion in Hindu 
society : "In Pantheism man with all his impurity fancies he is God. 

I. Inspiration, a Lecture delivered on the occasion of the Forty-third Anniver- 
sary of the Brahmo Soni&j, Calcutta, 1873. The principal sermons and discourses 
of Keshub have been collected into a volume, which viras published in English, at 
Calcutta, in 1882. 



IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH HINDU MYSTICISM. 261 

In Theism man is purified and so attuned to the divine will as to 
become one with it. The Theist's heaven is not absorption into the 
divine essence, but the Nirwana of Ahankar or the annihilation of 
egotism. In the highest state of inspiration, man's only creed is : 
* Lord thy will be done !'" Still, it is none the less true that by thus 
making union with God, through renunciation and ecstacy, man's 
supreme aim, Keshub furnished a dangerous element to the spirit of 
asceticism and contemplation, which is so powerful among his fellow 
countrymen, while at the same time, by his theory of Adesh, that is to 
say direct and special inspiration, he placed the vargaries of the in- 
dividual mind above the general laws of reason and morality. 

The appeal to the sentiments of hhakti had unquestionably con- 
tributed to the rapid progress of the Bharatbharsia by means of the 
fervour and persistence with which it fired the adherents of Keshub after 
their secession from the Adi Somaj. Miss Collet even supposes that 
it was these sentiments which saved Brahmoism from final dissolu- 
tion, i But confined, like every movement of the sort, within the 
domain of sentiment and imagination, it was exposed to the danger 
of over-shooting the mark and of encroaching upon other spheres of 
activity. In 1874, Keshub called forth the enthusiasm of his friends 
to such an extent that they remained six hours " in continual com- 
munion with God," and were sometimes led to withdraw into solitude, 
in order to chant the divine name there, with passionate fervour.^ 
At the same period he organized a pilgrimage into the Himalaya 
Mountains with a small company of devotees. They all took up 
their abode at a romantic spot commanding a vast panorama of snowy 
peaks, and went out every morning, each in a different direction, to 
give themselves up to prayer and meditation in solitude ; then they 
met to pray and sing in common, sometimes in a glade or on the 
slope of a valley, sometimes by the side of a stream or a waterfall.^ 

1. Bramho Year Book iox 1877. One of the first things Keshub took care to 
do, when he organized the Bharatbharsia Somaj, was to establish, in addition to a 
theological school, a Sangat sabha (an association for religious conversation), a 
Society of Theistic Friends, missionary conferences and other institutions for the 
cultivation and elevation of the religious sentiment in its various forms. 

2. See his essays in the early numbers of the Indian Mirror. A part of these 
articles were republished in 1 874, in a small volume entitled : Essays, Theological 
and Ethical, from the Indian Mirror, in which are to be found all the tendencies 
which subsequently developed themselves in the New Dispensation. 

3. Essays: Theological and Ethical^ ^. 147. 



262 THE ECLECTICISM OF THE BRAHMA DHARMA 

Charged, and not unjustly, with fostering the development of 
asceticism, Keshub defended himself as follows, in a letter to Miss 
Collet, dated the loth of December, 1875 • "The amount of ascetic 
self-mortification actually existing among us, has been greatly ex- 
aggerated. If you come and see us as we are, you will be surprised 
to find how little we possess of that sort of asceticism, which has 
caused so much anxiety and fear in the hearts of English friends. If 
we were like the Roman Catholics or Indian Hermits, the sharp 
criticism called forth would have been deserved. But my asceticism 
is not what is generally accepted as such. . . . Energy, philan- 
thropy, meditation, work, self-sacrifice, intellectual culture, domestic 
and social love, all these are united in my asceticism. Why, then, 
you may ask, this special outburst of ascetic zeal at this time ? It is 
needed. That is my explanation. Providence has pointed out this 
remedy for many of the besetting evils of the Somaj in these days. 
A like asceticism is needed as an antedote. ... Do regard it 
then as a remedy for the time most urgently needed."^ 

Meanwhile, at the commencement of 1876, the movement assumed 
a still more pronounced character, under the form of bairagya (renun- 
ciation), with a view, as it was said, to facilitate the removal of those 
obstacles which the carnal passions offer to moral and religious pro- 
gress. Its members were divided into four sections or orders : yoga 
(communion -with God) ; hhakti (love of God) ; gyan (researches for 
God) ; shaba (service of humanity).^ Each of these four classes com- 

1. Brahmo Year Book for 1877, page 22. 

2. Here is a specimen of what was taught in the yoga section ; it will be clear 
from this that what Keshub understood by asceticism is rather pure mysticism. 
" O you learner oiyoga, know that true communion is not possible unless thou dost 
draw within thyself wholly. All thy senses, nay thy whole being must be absorbed 
in the profound contemplation of the object of thy yoga. Yet thou shalt not always 
tarry within thyself. There must be the reverse process of coming from within to 
the world outside. . . . True yoga is therefore like a circle. It is a wheel 
continually revolving from the inner to the outer. From the outer it goes to the 
inner again. As the yoga advances, the gyrations become more rapid and frequent, 
till the distance and difference between the inner and the outer become continually 
less. Forms grow formless, and formlessness shapes itself into forms. In matter 
the spirit is beheld ; in spirit matter is transformed. In the glorious sun, the glory 
of glories is beheld. In the serene moon, the serenity of all serenities fills the soul. 
In the loud thunder, the might of the Lord is heard from afar. All things are full 
of Him. The yoga opens his eye, lo ! He is without. The yoga closes his eye, lo ! 
He is within. Thy yoga, O disciple, will then become complete. Do thou always 
strive after that completeness."— F(7§-a Teachings. {Brahmo Year Book for 1877.) 



IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH HINDU MYSTICISM. 263 

prised two grades of membership : the initiated or novice (sadhac), 
and the advanced or superior (sibha) ; this last position gave to those 
possessing it a special authority over their co-religionists : " There will 
henceforth be a difference between you and those who surround you," 
said Keshub to the superior order. " The divine light will come by 
your intervention, and they will have to receive it from you." This 
is an illustration of how, in forms of faith originally the least dogmatic 
and ritualistic, there arises that distinction between clergy and laity, 
which ultimately engenders sacerdotal theocracies, if nothing occurs 
to arrest its complete development. 

A proof of the danger which now threatened the Brahmo Soma] of 
India, is to be found in the fact that the first two orders in which the 
contemplative prevailed, immediately absorbed all the activity of the 
congregation, to the detriment of philosophical or literary studies and 
of the institutions designed to promote social reform. In 1876, for 
instance, Keshub breaks off his jubilee lectures and passes the greater 
part of his time in a garden in the environs of Calcutta, giving himself 
up to contemplation and prayer with his principal disciples, all of 
them being seated for hours together in the shade of trees on mats or 
tigers' skins. In a number of the Theistic Quarterly^ in 1877, Protab 
Chunder Mozoumdar — who shared, it may be remarked, the tendencies 
of Keshub — complains of the neglect in which his coadjutors were 
beginning to leave the useful elements of life, thought and sentiment, 
introduced by Western influence. In his report of the following year, 
he mentions with regret that the schools of the Bharatbharsia Somaj 
were in a state of decay. In 1877, the Brahmo Niketan^ had to be 
closed, and some months later the normal school for girls which 
Keshub had founded saw itself deprived of the Government grant on 
the ground of its inefficiency. 

There were certainly some few sober spirits in the congregation at 
Calcutta, who raised a protest against this sad tendency j but all they 
gained by their opposition was a charge of lukewarmness and jealousy. 
Several years earlier, indeed, the enemies of Keshub taking note of 
his doctrine of great men, and also of the display of veneration which 
in Eastern fashion he received from a part of his followers, had accused 
him of wishing to resuscitate the theory of Avatars to his own advan- 

I. A sort of model boarding house, organized by Keshub, in 1873, fo^^ the use 
of Brahmoistic students. 



264 THE ECLECTICISM OF THE BRAHMA DHARMA 

tage. But the very exaggeration of this reproach had contributed to 
strengthen his influence in Calcutta, as well as in the provinces, and 
he seemed to personify Brahmoism more than ever, when, at the end 
of 1877, the news that he was going to marry his daughter to the 
Maharajah of Couch-Behar fell like a thunder-clap upon the Brahmo 
Somaj. 

Couch-Behar is a tributary state of the Anglo-Indian Empire, situated 
in the north of Bengal, at the foot of the Himalaya, with an area of 
1292 square miles, and a population of 532,000 souls. Its ruler, who 
was still a minor, had received a liberal education, which had more 
or less freed him from the prejudices of religion and of caste. It was 
hoped, therefore, that this union, while it increased the moral power of 
Keshub, would at length gain over the young Prince to the doctrines 
of Brahmoism, if indeed it did not lead some day to his playing the 
part of a second Constantine in his dominions. 

Still the news of this marriage was far from meeting with a favour- 
able reception from all sections of the Brahmos. The Rajah was but 
fifteen years old and his bride only thirteen, that is to say neither 
of them had reached the age required by the "Native Marriage 
Act," and it was urged that Keshub had been one of the first to de- 
mand that Act with a view to prevent premature marriages. As a 
matter of fact, the law was applicable neither to Couch-Behar nor to 
the person of its sovereign. Still, was this any reason for not respect- 
ing a legal arrangement, whose introduction into Anglo-Indian rule 
had been regarded as one of the most important social achievements 
of Brahmoism ? Then again, if the marriage was not to be celebrated 
according to the requirements of the " Native Marriage Act," there 
remained but the use of the Hindu ritual, more or less freed from 
its Polytheistic formulas, or of that employed in the Adi Somaj, and 
it must not be forgotten that the latter ritual, besides containing 
several ceremonies opposed to the spirit of neo-Brahmoism, left the 
door open to polygamy and other abuses. If the young Rajah was 
a genuine Brahmo why did he not make the " Native Marriage Act" 
binding in his dominions, and why did he not wait a year longer in 
order to marry according to the principles of his co-religionists, after 
attaining the matrimonial majority prescribed by the new law ? 

Keshub Chunder Sen, who had entered into communication with 
the Deputy-Commissioner of Couch-Behar, an English functionary, 



IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH HINDU MYSTICISM. 265 

acting as guardian to the young prince, at first made his consent de- 
pendent upon the following conditions : — (i) That the Maharajah 
should adhere explicitly to Brahmoism ; (2) That the marriage should 
be celebrated according to the rites of the Bharatbharsia Somaj, with 
the simple addition of such local and traditional ceremonies as might 
be deemed necessary, provided that they did not imply any idolatrous 
practice; (3) that the solemnization of the marriage should be de- 
ferred till the bride and bridegroom had attained their matrimonial 
majority. On the first two points he obtained all the assurances he 
desired; but with regard to the third, he was told by the Anglo- 
Indian Government that as the Rajah had formed the project of an 
approaching journey to England, it was absolutely necessary that he 
should be married before carrying out this intention. At last, there- 
fore, he yielded and, on the 9th of February, 1878, the Indian Mirror 
of Calcutta contained an official announcement that the marriage 
would be celebrated at Couch-Behar in the early days of March. 

Protestations immediately began to shower down upon Keshub. 
In the course of eight days, he received no less than forty-four ; one 
was signed by twenty-three of his principal followers in the capital, 
another by the students of Calcutta, and a third by Brahmoist ladies, 
while at least thirty came from various provincial congregations. 
Meanwhile a committee was formed in the Calcutta congregation to 
watch over the interests of the Brahmo Somaj during the crisis. 
This committee at once called several meetings at the Town Hall, 
one of which, composed of at least 3000 persons, according to the 
Indian Daily NewSy formally condemned the marriage project, add- 
ing, by means of a resolution, carried by a large majority : " That the 
Secretary of the Brahmo Somaj of India by countenancing this 
marriage, and by the utter disregard he has shown of the strong ex- 
pression of Brahmo public opinion on the subject, has forfeited his 
claims to the confidence of the Brahmo community." The day before 
this meeting, Keshub had set out for Couch-Behar with his daughter 
and a large party of friends. 

His position was even more delicate and difficult than it was thought 
to be at Calcutta. There existed at the Court of Couch-Behar, as 
indeed in the majority of the native Principalities, two parties : a party 
of reform, more or less directly encouraged by the English Government 
which was carrying on the administration during the minority of the 



THE ECLECTICISM OF THE BRAHMA DHARMA 

sovereign, and the orthodox party, openly supported by the Princesses 
of the Royal House, the Ranies. When the preliminary festivities had 
already lasted five days, the mother and grandmother of the young 
prince declared, at the instigation of their pandits, that Keshub having 
lost his caste, could not be present within the sacred enclosure at the 
nuptual ceremony; that only Brahmans wearing the symbolic cord 
would be allowed to take part in the service ; that all the expressions 
introduced into the Marriage Service by the Brahmos, including the 
passage relative to the consent of the bride, would be cut out ; and 
finally that the married couple would have to celebrate the Hom or 
Homa, the sacrifice of fire. These claims were communicated to 
Keshub during the evening of the 4th of March. 

All the following day was spent in vainly attempting to bring 
about a compromise. In order not to interrupt the regular course 
of the arrangements, Keshub had already given over his daughter 
to the attendants whose duty it was to convey her to the Ranies; 
when driven, however, to extremities by the demands of the pandits, 
he declared he would rather break off the marriage than yield to 
such conditions, whatever scandal might be the result. But they 
told him this was too late, and that his daughter would not be given 
back to him, unless he consented to pay the expenses of all the 
preliminary festivities — a lac-and-a-half of rupees, or fifteen thousand 
pounds sterling. For a short time he adhered to his refusal, but his 
friends calmed him, and, thanks to the intervention of the Deputy- 
Commissioner, an arrangement was concluded on the following basis : 
The bride was to be led to the altar by her uncle, Krishna Bihari Sen, 
a Brahmo who had not lost his caste ; the ceremony originally agreed 
upon in the stipulations for the marriage was to be followed; the 
young wife was then to retire, and the Homa to be celebrated in the 
presence of the young Rajah alone. 

It was two o'clock in the morning before this compromise was 
settled and the negotiations had lasted from day-break the previous 
morning. Both parties betook themselves at once to the court of 
honour, which had been prepared for the ceremony. The Brahmos, 
however, who had been solemnly promised that no idolatrous symbol 
should be introduced, were disagreeably surprised to find there certain 
objects of an equivocal form, such as jars of water half covered over 
with banana leaves, and above all, two kinds of pillars about a yard- 



IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH HINDU MYSTICISM. 267" 

and-a-half high, enveloped in red cloth covers. These were probably 
images of Hari and of Gouri, the patron or tutelary divinities of Hindu 
marriages, whom there had been found means of inviting incognito 
to the wedding. Meanwhile the Deputy-Commissioner calmed the 
suspicions of the Brahmos, as well as he could, and the ceremony 
proceeded without a hitch till the moment when the friends of Keshub 
began to recite the prayers of their liturgy. Then there arose a 
clamour which drowned their voices, and it was in the private apart- 
ments of the Prince that the exchange of vows had to be made, a 
feature of the ceremony specially disagreeable to the Hindus of the 
old traditional school. 

A week later the young Maharajah set out for Calcutta, in order to 
embark there for Europe. This journey, which was about to com- 
promise his caste privileges, caused the orthodox of Couch-Behar a 
feeling of perhaps even greater pain than his marriage with the 
daughter of a Brahmo. A despatch published by the Indian Mirror 
of the 13th of March, states that on the announcement of his depar- 
ture, the Ranies, maddened with grief, struck their heads against the 
walls till they bled profusely, and that the prince had to take refuge 
against their lamentations in the residence of the Deputy-Com- 
missioner, without even venturing to bid them good-bye. 

Here is a passage from a petition which these princesses addressed 
at that time to the Commissioner of Couch-Behar : " We are helpless, 
weak women, you are wise and powerful. The honour and prestige 
of our family is entrusted to your hands. We, therefore, repeatedly 
pray that you will not, during the minority of the Maharaja, and 
in opposition to the wishes of all, send him to England. The 
Maharaja's servants have all fled ; his Brahmin (cook) refuses to go 
and we cannot get another (to serve him). If you are not averse to 
a matter so destructive to our caste and religion, then we request that 
you will at once send this petition to His Honour, the Lieutenant- 
Governor. When our caste and religion are about to go and this life 
and future life are both in peril, we are prepared to send this petition 
of powerless and unsupported women to the bright throne of Srimati,. 
the Empress of India." It should be added that the other relatives 
of the Rajah had even declined to be present at his marriage.^ 



I, Brahmo Year Book for 1878, pages 9 — 68. 



^68 THE ECLECTICISM OF THE BRAHMA DHARMA 

All these incidents, however trivial and futile they may appear to 
■us at a distance, will not astonish those who reflect upon the pro- 
foundly conventional nature of ancient Hindu society, and the dissolv- 
ing influence exerted upon it by its sudden contract with European 
civilization. When we bear in mind, indeed, the obstacles, if not the 
ill-feeling, which mixed unions encounter, even in countries where 
civil marriage is a legal institution, we cannot be surprised at the 
importance attached to the least formality calculated to determine 
■whether this princely union should be regarded as a Hindu or a 
Brahmoist marriage. Nor will anyone be astonished to learn that the 
Orthodox and the Reformers were alike disappointed by the result. 
The adherents of Hinduism complained that certain essential formulas 
of their liturgy had been omitted to satisfy the claims of a heretical 
creed ; on the other hand the Brahmos were aggrieved that a premature 
marriage had been sanctioned, a compromise made with the spirit of 
caste, and idolatrous rites permitted at the ceremony. 

Now in my opinion the conduct of Keshub should not be judged 
too severely in this matter ; for he struggled as best he could, though 
unsuccessfully, to maintain the integrity of his Brahmoist principles. 
He even succeeded in his desire that the marriage should not be con- 
summated before the return of the Maharajah from his trip to England, 
and when this took place the young couple were re-united at Calcutta 
according to the ritual of the Brahmos. ^ Still it cannot be denied that 
Keshub failed in loyalty to his own principles, and in cases where 
a simple follower might be excused for yielding to the pressure of 
circumstances, a leader is expected to adopt a more uncompromising 
position. He who would exercise a religious or political ascendency 
over his fellows must make it his first care to shape his private life to 
his public career, his acts to his teachings. 

By violating in his own family the rules he had laid down for the 
use of others, the reformer who had separated himself from the Adi 
Somaj with so much klat, because it was not sufficiently free from 
Hindu prejudices and traditions, had committed one of those incon- 

I. Brahmo Year Book for 1881, page 76. The London Truths of Dec. 22nd, 
1883, states that "the young Rajah who has just attained his majority, is one of 
the most popular men in Calcutta, and his bright intelligent face is to be seen at 
social gatherings of every description. The Maharani is a charming little woman, 
who knows how to receive her guests with a grace and an ease of manners that 
might be envied by many an Eastern hostess." 



IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH HINDU MYSTICISM. 269 

sistent acts which even necessity does not suffice to justify ; and the 
matter was made worse when, to defend himself from the attacks with 
which he was assailed, he entrenched' himself behind the famous doc- 
trine of Adesh, affirming that he had followed the direct inspiration of 
God. Strange as this defence was, no one, even among his adver- 
saries, called in question his sincerity, which is certainly one of the 
highest tributes of respect that could have been paid to his character. 
But his very sincerity merely served to give prominence to the dangers 
of such a system and to show the necessity for its open repudiation. 

Of the fifty-seven Somajes which expressed an opinion on this 
subject, fifty censured Keshub's conduct and twenty-six of them 
demanded his immediate deposition from office. Finally, on the 21st 
of March, 1878, at the close of a meeting which Keshub had himself 
called, the Brahmos of Calcutta passed a resolution declaring *' That 
in the opinion of this meeting he cannot continue in the office of the 
minister." But he contested the validity of this decision under the 
pretext of irregularity in the voting, and when on the following 
Sunday his opponents sought to take possession of the Mandir or 
Church, he succeeded in repulsing them by calling in the aid of the 
police. 

The dissentients consequently resolved to secede from the Bharat- 
bharsia Somaj, and to form a new organization, the Sadharan Somaj 
or Universal Church. On the 15th of May the basis of the move- 
ment was agreed upon in the following terms, by a meeting of more 
than four hundred Brahmos : — " We believe that faith in a Supreme 
Being, and in existence after death, is natural to man ; we regard the 
relation between God and man to be direct and immediate ; we do 
not believe in the infallibility of any man or of any scripture ; what- 
ever books contain truths calculated to enoble the soul or elevate the 
character, is a Brahmo scripture ; and whoever teaches such truths is 
his teacher and his guide. We regard the fourfold culture of man's 
intellect, conscience, affections and devotion as equally important and 
equally necessary for his salvation. . . . We look upon the enjoy- 
ment of uncontrolled authority by a single individual in any religious 
community as a calamity, and far from looking upon freedom of 
thought as reprehensible, we consider it as a safeguard against corrup- 
tion and degeneracy. We regard the belief in an individual being a 
way to salvation, or a link between God and man, as a belief un- 



270 THE ECLECTICISM OF THE BRAHMA DHARMA 

worthy of a Theist and those who hold such a belief, as unworthy of 
the Brahmo name. We consider it to be blasphemy and an insult to 
the Majesty of heaven to claim divine inspiration for any act opposed 
to the dictates of reason, truth and morality." 

By the end of September the work of the Provisional Committee 
was finished, and the Sadharan Somaj assumed a definitive constitu- 
tion, with the double character of being a Brahmo congregation in 
Calcutta and of forming a centre for affiliated provincial congrega- 
tions. Besides, the entire organization was formed on the model of 
the Bharatbharsia Somaj, except that it entrusted the ultimate direc- 
tion of its affairs to a committee of forty members, chosen directly 
by the General Assembly, with an additional delegate from each of 
the affiliated Somaj es. 

The second article of its constitution defined as follows the principles 
to which its members were called upon to subscribe : (i) The existence 
of an infinite Creator ; (2) the immortality of the soul ; (3) the duty 
and the necessity of rendering a spiritual worship to God ; (4) the 
rejection of the belief that salvation is to be obtained by the interven- 
tion of a book or the aid of infallible men.^ 

On the 22nd of January, 1881, the members of the Sadharan 
Somaj solemnly inaugurated their worship at the vast mandir they 
had built for themselves, in Cornwallis-street, Calcutta. The congre- 
gation met at dawn-, in their temporary place of worship, where, 
after prayers, the pandit Sevanath Sastri reminded them how they must 
sing the name of God in the streets, without making a parade of it. 
This introductory service being over, the congregation betook them- 
selves to the new church, in procession, singing suitable hymns as 
they went. As they proceeded their numbers increased so much that, 
to use the language of an eye-witness, the procession formed " a sea 
of uncovered heads surging slowly onwards." From 1,200 to 1,500 
were constantly present at the devotional exercises and the ceremonies 
of inauguration, which extended over two entire days.2 

The reader will be able to judge from all this how far the members 
of the Sadharan Somaj merit the appellation of Secular Brahmos, 
which Keshub's friends have contemptuously styled them. On the 

1. The New Dispensation and the Sadhdran Brahmo Somdj, by the pandit 
Sevanath Sastri. Madras, 1881. P. 90. 

2. The Brahmo Year Book for 188 1. 



IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH HINDU MYSTICISM. 271 

contrary, indeed, it is they who represent the genuine idea of Brahmoism 
in all its integrity. It is but just to add, moreover, that they have 
already reproduced or developed the principal agencies of reform 
which had grouped themselves around the Bharatbharsia Somaj. 
These consist of schools and colleges for both sexes, libraries, sanghat 
sab has y missions and lectures, philanthropical societies, journals in 
several languages, associations of women, &c. In relation to the 
emancipation of women, they are even in advance of the Bharatbharsia 
Somaj, which while demanding for young girls the advantages of a 
complete education, does not, however, go so far as to grant them the 
freedom of action which characterizes Western civilization. ^ Finally, 
they completely organized, as we have seen, the principle of self- 
government in the affiairs of the Church. 

I. Savanath Ststri. Op. Cit. Page 74. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 



Increasing influence of Keshub among his followers after the secession of the 
dissentients — Am I an inspired prophet ? — India asks : Who is Christ ? — The 
motherhood of God — Proclamation of the New Dispensation — Borrowings from 
the rites and symbols of Hinduism — Invocation of Ilari — The sacrifice of Homa — 
Mystic dances — Keshub's judgment of Hinduism — Extension of his syncretism 
to the doctrines and practices of other religions — The Eucharist and Baptism in 
the New Dispensation — Ecclesiastical vows — Borrowings from the Religion of 
Humanity — Communion of saints and subjective pilgrimages — The theatre of the 
New Dispensation — Keshub as a juggler — Criticisms urged against his mixed 
system of rites — Max Mliller's Letter to the Times — Keshub's death on the 6th 
of January, 1884 — Keshub's religious ideal and the doctrine of Adesh — The 
true scope of his syncretism — Antecedents and future of his attempt. 



Whilst the Sadharan Somaj was thus taking in hand the cause of 
true Brahmoism, the mother Church continued to develop itself in 
the opposite direction. As was to be expected, the secession of those 
who were hostile to Keshub resulted in an increase of his ascendancy 
over the minds of the Brahmos who remained faithful to him, while 
it, at the same time, permitted him to follow out his mystic tendencies 
without any counteracting influence. During the whole of 1879, he 
never ceased to urge, both in his sermons and in his principal organ, 
the Indian Mirror^ that he had been favoured with special divine in- 
spiration. Taking up in a direct way the thorny question : Am I an 
inspired prophet? — in his anniversary address on the 22nd of January, 
he did not hesitate to range himself among the sinners rather than 
among the saints of the world, and to speak of himself as being un- 
worthy to touch the shoes of the last of the prophets ; but at the 
same time he described himself as an " extraordinary " man, invested 
with a divine mission and favoured by mysterious communications 
with the ancient prophets, and even with God himself *' The Lord 
said I was to have no doctrine, no creed," he added, '*but a perennial 
and perpetual inspiration from heaven.'' 

On the 9th of April he gave a lecture in English at the Calcutta 
Town Hall, under the title — India asks : Who is Christ ? This 
left an impression upon certain of his audience that he was shortly 

T 



274 THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

about to become a convert to Christianity, or at least to a sort of 
Hindu Arianism. In fact, however, if he declared, on that occasion, 
his acceptance of Christ, it was — as he distinctly added — in the. spirit 
of the Hindu scriptures, that is in harmony with the eclectic principle 
which makes of Christ a great religious reformer, but refuses to give 
him the absolute pre-eminence and the unique mission ascribed to 
him by the Christian sects. "In Christ you see," he continued, 
" true Pantheism. . . . Behold Christ comes to us as an Asiatic 
in race, as a Hindu in faith, as a kinsman and a brother, and he de- 
mands your heart's affection. Will you not give him your affection ? 
. . . For Christ is a true Yogi, and he will merely help us to 
realize our national ideal of a Yogi." In the month of September 
he instituted an order of religious teachers, in which he enrolled him- 
self with Protab Chunder Mozoumdar and three missionaries. The 
distinctive badge of the brotherhood was a dress of yellow cloth, 
known in India by the name of gairic bastra. 

Some time afterwards, Keshub solemnly proclaimed the " Mother- 
hood of God," as an idea correlative with that of the divine Father- 
hood. " Many are ready to worship me as their Father," he makes 
the Divinity say. " But they know not that I am their Mother, too, 
tender, indulgent, forbearing and forgiving. Ye shall go forth from 
village to village, singing my mercies and proclaiming unto all men 
that I am India's Mother. ''i As a result of this, a band of twenty- 
five persons, among whom were nine missionaries, quitted Calcutta on 
the 24th of October, and travelled over about 250 miles in five weeks, 
preaching everywhere the Motherhood of God.^ 

Meanwhile, as early as the month of November, the Indian Mirror, 
the official organ of the Somaj, announced for an early date, one of 
those special manifestation^ of the divine will, such as the world re- 
ceives every time it feels the need of them, and, it was added, that 
Keshub would be "a part, a large part, the central part" of this 
manifestation. As a matter of fact, the manifestation, in question, 
took place on the 22nd of January, 1880, when Keshub announced 
urbi et orbi the birth of a child destined to receive the heritage of 
every revelation and every religion. The child was the Nava Bidhan 

1. Indian Mirror oi the 12th of October, 1879. 

2. Brahmo Year Book for 1 880. 



THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 275 

(the New Dispensation), which claims to be a fusion or rather a 
synthesis of every form of faith. 

It should be noted that Brahmoism has always aimed at the 
establishment of a universal worship with principles common to every 
religion. The Brahma Dharma claims, in a certain sense, to form the 
residuum which persists, after the gradual elemination of everything 
contradictory and consequently false, in special systems of religious 
belief. Wholly different from this eclecticism is the attitude of the 
New Dispensation : it virtually contends, not that there is truth in all 
religions but that every religion is true.^ Keshub compares it, in 
turn, to the thread which holds together the pearls of a necklace, to 
the ray of light in which the colours of the prism are blended, to the 
symphony produced by an accord of musical instruments, and to the 
dissolving chemical which reduces all bodies to a single substance. 2 
Protab Chunder Mozoumdar further explains, that it really is a ques- 
tion of a Dispensation, since in common with all religion it is a gift 
of God — and of a New Dispensation — not that it had created new 
truths, but because it presents in a new light the truths partially pro- 
claimed in other religions.^ 

All religious practices, rites, ceremonies, and even all the pretended 
revelations, possess an analogous value in this conception, so far as 
they serve for symbols, means, or agencies in the soul's effort to rise 
towards God : the devotees of Chaitanya, for instance, delight to sing 
hymns in honour of Hari (he who blots out sin), a personification of 
Vishnu. Very well, then ! Keshub will go through town and country 
and sing the praises of Hari, with banners, trumpets, and cymbals, 
whilst the crowd prostrate themselves on his way, and, with their heads 
in the dust, cry, " Hari^ Hari, boll " The old Aryans, again, and the 
Agnihotri Brahmans of to-day delight in the special sacrifices to Agni, 
" the resplendent God of Fire ;" hence Keshub will celebrate the 
Homa by ostentatiously pouring clarified butter on the flame of the 

1. Sunday Mirror of October the 3rd, 1881. 

2. We Apostles of the New Dispensation. Calcutta, 1 88 1. 

3. Theistic Quarterly Review of January, 1881. Here, moreover, is the pro- 
gramme which Keshub assigns to his new creation, in the first number of his organ, 
The New Dispensation. *' One God, one scripture, one Church. Eternal progress 
of the soul. Communion of prophets and saints. Fatherhood and Motherhood of 
God ; brotherhood of man and sisterhood of woman. Harmony of knowledge and 
holiness, love and work, Yoga and asceticism in their highest development. Loyalty 
to the Sovereign." — {The New Dispensation of March the 24th, 1881.) 



276 THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

sanctuary.^ And further, in the worship of Vishnu, the Hindus are 
accustomed to perform mystic dances before their idols : Keshub will 
therefore organise a ceremony in which young men, dressed in garments 
of different colours, will dance in concentric circles around the " In- 
visible Mother," within the mandir, and he himself will set them an 
example by dancing before his vedi (pulpit), as David did formerly 
before the Ark.i 

Does it follow, as some have maintained, that Keshub thus effected 
a return to Hinduism ? To assert this is to misunderstand the thought 
which dictated his bearing toward the faith of his fathers. Here, 
indeed, is a passage from an article in which he made a special effort 
to demonstrate that there is something in Hinduism which is neither 
to be despised nor rejected : — 

" Hindu idolatry is not to be altogether overlooked or rejected. As 
we explained some time ago, it represents millions of broken fragments 
of God. Collect them together and you get the indivisible Divinity. 
. . . We have found out that every idol worshipped by the Hindus 
represents an attribute of God, and that each attribute is called by a 
different name. The believer in the New Dispensation is required to 
worship God as the possessor of all those attributes, represented by 
the Hindu as innumerable as three-hundred-and-thirty millions. To 
believe in an undivided God without reference to those aspects of his 
nature, is to believe in an abstract God, and it would lead us to 
practical Rationalism and Infidelity. Nor can we worship the same 
God with the same attribute investing Him. That would make our 
worship dull, lifeless, and insipid. If we are to worship Him, we 
should worship him in all his manifestations. Hence we should con- 
template Him with these numerous attributes. We shall name one 
attribute, Sarasvate, another Lakshmi, another Mahadeva, another 
Yagadhatri, &c., and worship God each day under a new name, that 
is to say, in a new aspect. We do not worship Him as Yogi for 
ever, or as Father or as Mother, or as Lakshmi, or as Sarasvate. But 
now the one and then the other, and so on, beholding our Hari in a 
new garb and in new holiness for ever. How bewitching the prospect, 
how grand the picture !" — (Quoted from an article The Philosophy of 
Idol Worships in the Sunday Mirror of the ist of August, 1880.} 

I. See a curious description of this ceremony in The Brahnio Year Book for 



THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 277 

This conception is doubtless perfectly reconcilable with Hinduism, 
for Vishnu expressed himself long since in these eclectic terms : 
Those who, full of faith, worship other divinities honour me also, 
although apart from the ancient ordinance ; for it is I who receive 
and preside over all sacrifices. Only they do not know me in my 
true nature. 

But the originality of the New Dispensation consists in the fact 
that its syncretism overleaps the limits of Hindu creeds, to place in 
juxta-position with them the beliefs and ceremonies held and practised 
by all the other religions, beginning with Christianity. Even at the 
time of his visit to Birmingham in 1870, Keshub took occasion to 
state to the representatives of the different sects, who were discount- 
ing his speedy conversion to Christianity : " I wish to say I have not 
come to England as one who has yet to find Christ, When the 
Roman Catholic, the Protestant, the Unitarian, the Trinitarian, the 
Broad Church, the Low Church and the High Church all come 
round me and offer me their respective Christs, I desire to say to one 
and all : Think you that I have no Christ within me ? Though an 
Indian, I can still humbly say : Thank God that I have my Christ." 
It is no matter for surprise, therefore, that like Mohammed, he should 
have accepted Christ as one of the prophets of the New Dispensation, 
and that he should have paid considerable attention to the principal 
rites of Christianity in his liturgy, notably to those of Baptism and 
the Lord's Supper. It should be added, however, that he baptized 
in the name of the Vedantine Trinity as well as in that of the Christian 
Trinity, and, as to the Eucharist, he administered it by means of rice 
and water. 

The description of these ceremonies shows clearly the amount of 
freedom with w^hich Keshub treated the rites he drew from other faiths 
to enrich his liturgy.^ I shall confine myself to the reproduction of 
the story of his own baptism " in the waters of the Jordan," from The 
New Dispensation of the i6th of June.^ 

His followers being told that they had to reach the banks of the 
Jordan, betook themselves in procession to a tank or pond situate on 
some property which belonged to him. The banks were decorated with 
foliage and flowers ; the flag of the New Dispensation was floating in 

I. Sivanath Sastri, The N'e'w Dispensation and the Sddhdran Brahino Somdj, 
pages 56 and seq. 



278 THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

the wind. When they had all taken a place on the steps of the 
reservoir, in the broiling sun, the minister, seated on a tiger's skin, 
addressed the following prayer to the great Varuna, the Source of Life : 

"O thou great Varuna, Water of Life! Sacred Water, mighty 
expanse of Seas and Oceans and Rivers we glorify thee. Thou art not 
God but the Lord is in thee. Thou art full of the beauty and glory 
of Heaven; each drop revealeth the Divine face. Thou art the Water 
of Life. A most helpful friend art thou unto us. From the clouds 
above thou comest in copious showers to quench the thirst of the 
parched earth, and to fertilize its soil. Thou fillest rivers, seas, and 
oceans. Thou causest the dry earth to become fruitful and thou 
producest plentiful harvests, fruits and corn in abundance for our 
nourishment. O friend of the human race, thou satisfiest our hunger, 
thou appeasest our thirst. Thou cleansest our body and our home, 
and washest away filth and impurity. O thou great Purifier, thou 
healest disease and thou givest health. Cooler and comforter, daily 
we bathe in thee and feel refreshed and comforted. Ships, freighted 
with riches, float upon thy bosom and bring us affluence from distant 
shores. O serene pacifier, thou extinguishest all agony and refreshest 
the troubled head. O true friend and benefactor, our venerable 
ancestors loved thee, and honoured thee, and adored thee. And 
to-day, as in days gone by, the Ganges, the Jamouna, the Narmada, 
the Godaveri, ihe Kaveri, the Krishna, and all the sacred streams in 
the land, are greatly revered by the people. Say, mighty Varuna, 
didst thou not suggest to Buddha the idea of Nirwana, O thou 
extinguisher of the fire of all pain and discomfort. And Jesus, too, 
magnified thee, and he praised thee as none ever did before. For he 
saw and found in thee new life and salvation. In the holy Jordan 
was the Son of God baptized. We praise thee, we bless thee. Holy 
Water ! Rain and river, lakes, seas, and oceans, we bless and magnify 
thee!" 

Keshub then read the chapter in which the Evangelist Matthew 
describes the baptism of Jesus. Having done this he explained that 
Jesus desired to be baptized " because the water was full of God ; " 
then anointing himself with a delicate oil, he walked down the steps 
of the reservoir, praying as he went in a loud voice, and immersed 
himself three times up to the neck, saying successively : " Glory be 
to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Ghost." After this, in 



THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 279 

order to specially honour the Trinity, he plunged a fourth time into 
the water, uttering the words: ''Blessed be Sacchidananda" (the 
Vedantine Trinity, Truth, Wisdom and Joy). He then left the water, 
but not till he had filled a vase that was handed to him. This water 
he used to sprinkle the heads of his followers, crying as he did so : 
*^Sdntif" (peace), ^^ Sdntt I Sdntif" While he was changing his 
clothes, a part also of the audience bathed in the reservoir ; then all 
withdrew, carrying away the Water of Peace (Santijal), in earthen or 
metal vessels. In the afternoon the women and children did the 
same. 

A few days later Keshub's organ. The New Dispensation^ insisted 
upon the essentially independent and original character of this 
ceremony. " There was no mimicry," said the writer, " no vulgar or 
mechanical imitation of Europeanism or of foreign Christianity. The 
whole thing was a Hindu festival." 

It is from the Roman Church that Keshub seems to have borrowed 
the solemn vows of chastity and poverty, which on several occasions 
he caused his missionaries to take, appearing however to assign to 
them only a temporary and partial character. He drew from every 
source, even going so far, it would appear, as to borrow from Comte, 
whom he seems to have imitated in making a distinction between an 
abstract form of worship and one of a concrete kind for every day of 
the year, the former addressing itself to general truths and social 
aggregates, the latter to persons considered as types. Thus the 
Brahmo Pocket Ahnanac for 1883, assigns respectively to each day of 
the week, a double religious purpose, which is indicated by the follow- 
ing arrangement : — 

" I. Harmony of the Prophets. — Monday is dedicated to the 
Rishis \ Tuesday to Chaitanya ; Wednesday to Moses ; Thursday to 
Socrates ; Friday to Buddha ; Saturday to men of learning ; Sunday 
to Jesus Christ. 

" II. Order of Duties. — Monday is dedicated to the family and to 
children ; Tuesday to servants ; Wednesday to benefactors ; Thursday 
to enemies j Friday to the inferior creatures ; Saturday to the poor ; 
Sunday to the holy dead. 

In the same order of ideas we find what Keshub termed the " com- 
munion of saints," which is one of his most curious creations, and 
was conceived of and carried out in the following manner : The 



280 THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

pious Brahmos choose some celebrated historical personage — Moses, 
Mohammed, Socrates, Chaitanya, Theodore Parker, &c., and during 
a week they occupy themselves exclusively in the study of his works 
or in meditating upon his career. This done, they meet in a place 
transformed for the occasion into some noted locahty in Palestine, 
Greece, Arabia, or America. There the prophet or philosopher is 
invoked in imagination ; an attempt is made to recall the conditions 
and surroundings of his life ; a conversation is entered upon respecting 
the true sense of his teaching ; and finally opinions are expressed as 
to what he would say and do if living in our day. These are what 
Keshub called subjective pilgrimages. 

" We have been asked," he says, " to explain what we mean by these 
pilgrimages. They are simply a practical application of this principle 
of subjectivity which characterizes the New Dispensation. As pilgrims 
we approach the great saints, killing the distance of time and space. 
We enter into them and they enter us. In our souls we cherish 
them and we imbibe their character and principles. We are above 
the popular error that materializes the spirits of the departed saints 
and clothes them again with the flesh and the bones which they have 
for ever cast away. Nor do we hold these spirits to be omnipresent. 
We believe they still exist; but where they are we cannot tell. 
Wherever they may be, it is possible for us earthly pilgrims, if we are 
only men of faith and prayer, to realize them in consciousness. If 
they are not personally present with us, they may be spiritually drawn 
into our life and character. They may be made to live and grow in 
us." 

The founder of the New Dispensation called even the theatre into 
requisition, by organizing at Calcutta the representation of a drama, 
entitled " The Harmony of Religions," which was due to the pen of 
one of his followers. Keshub himself appeared on the scene as a 
juggler.^ Among other "tricks" which he performed before the public, 
was that of the instantaneous fusion of a cross, a crescent, the Om 
(the sacred symbol of the Vedantines), the trident of Siva and the 
Khunti of the Vishnuites into a single symbol. Another feat con- 
sisted in showing the body of a bird, taken to represent the sacred 
dove which " descended from heaven eighteen centuries ago, and has 
been struck down to-day by the blows of human reason." Suddenly, 

I. Brahmo Year-Book for 1882, page 56. 



THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 281 

the dead bird disappeared, and a living bird came down, as from 
heaven, bearing on its neck a card or ticket, with this inscription : — 
Narva Bidhdner jai, Saiya Dharma Samanvaia ("Victory to the 
New Dispensation ! Let there be a harmony of all religions.")^ 

All this exuberance of symbolism greatly shocked not only the 
Brahmoists of the old school, who had passed their life in combatting 
the rites and ceremonies of idolatry, but also the Hindus and the 
orthodox Christians, who were scandalized by this eccentric use and, 
in a sense, parody of their most sacred ceremonies. In England, 
above all, Keshub brought about the final alienation of those who had 
formerly felt the warmest sympathy with his movement, among whom 
Miss Collet may be specially mentioned. Max Miiller and Dean 
Stanley, perhaps, stood alone in asking the public to be on their 
guard against any hasty condemnation of a movement which it was 
very difficult, they urged, to judge of impartially at a distance. "It is 
the old story over again," wrote the eminent Indianist of Oxford, to 
The Times of the 24th of March, 1880. "Nothing is so difficult for 
a reformer, particularly for a religious reformer, as not to allow the 
incense offered by his followers to darken his mental vision, and not 

I. The hymns of the New Dispensation reveal the same mystic eclecticism. 
Here is a specimen of them, "The Mystic Dance," borrowed from The New 
Dispensation of the 24th of March, 1881 : — "Chanting the name of Hari, the 
saints in heaven dance. My Gouranga (Chaitanya) dances amid a band of devotees : 
how beautiful his eyes which shower love ! Jesus dances ; Moses dances with hands 
upraised ; Devarshi Narad dances, playing on the harp. Old King David dances, 
and with him Janak and Yudhisthir, The great Yogi Mahadeo dances in joy, and 
with him dances John, accompanied by his disciples. Nanak and Prahlad dance ; 
dances Nityananda ; and in their midst dance Paul and Mohammed. Dhruba 
dances ; Suk dances ; dances Haridas ; and in their company dance all the servants 
of the Lord. Sankar and Wasudeb dance — Ram and Sakya, Muni, Yogis, devotees, 
ascetics, workers and wise men. Dadu and Confucius dance — Kabir and Toolsy ; 
Hindus and Mussulmans dance, on their lips the smile of love. The sinner dances; 
the saint dances ; the poor and the rich dance together ; the women sing ' Glory, 
glory,' with sweet voices. Renouncing the pride of caste and rank, the Brahmin 
and the Chandal dance embracing each other. Surrounded by saints, in the centre 
is Sri Hari, the Lord of all, and all dance unitedly, with hands round each other's 
neck. And in this holy company dance the believers in the New Dispensation, 
killing the distance of space and time. The fishes dance in the sea, and the fowls 
in the air ; and the trees and plants dance, their branches sporting with the wind. 
The Bible and the Vedas dance together with the Bhagavat ; the Puran and the 
Koran dance, joined in love. The scientist and the ascetic and the poet dance, 
inebriated with the new wine of the New Dispensation. The world below and the 
world above dance, chanting the name of Hari, as they hear the sweet Gospel of 
the New Dispensation." 



282 THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

to mistake the divine accents of truth for a voice wafted from the 
clouds. In this respect,' Keshub Chunder Sien has shared in the 
weakness of older prophets ; but let us not forget that he possesses 
also a large share of their strength and virtue. . . . His utter- 
ances of late have shown signs, I am sorry to say, of an overwrought 
brain and of an over-sensitive heart. He sometimes seems on the 
verge of very madness of faith. But I fear for his health and his 
head far more than for his heart, and I should deeply regret if any 
harsh words from those who ought to know best how to make allow- 
ance for the difi&culties and dangers of all religious reformers should 
embitter a noble life already full of many bitternesses." 

The eminent Sanscrit scholar divined but too truly what was about 
to take place. So great was the spiritual exaltation of Keshub's life, 
that it could not fail to rapidly wear out his exceptionally nervous 
organization, and as early as 1882 he suffered from the first attacks of 
the malady which suddenly became more acute in the autumn of 
1883, and carried him off on the 6th of the following January, when 
he had but just entered upon his forty-fifth year. Among the last 
persons who had an opportunity of conversing with him on his sick 
bed, were, by a strange and significant coincidence, the venerable 
Debendra Nath Tagore, the Anglican Bishop of Calcutta, and the 
Hindu Paramhansa of Dakhinaswar, that is to say the principal repre- 
sentatives of the three great religions which he had specially attempted 
to fuse together in the New Dispensation. 

His death was regarded throughout India as a national misfortune. 
The entire press of England as well as of India, spoke in sympathetic 
terms of the high moral character and the eminent services of the 
deceased. At the same time expressions of condolence were received 
from all parts of the country and even from Europe. Queen Victoria, 
for instance, telegraphed to the family an expression of her sympathy 
and regret. Even the Sadharan Somaj, putting aside its hostile 
opinions, passed a resolution in acknowledgment of the long and 
faithful services rendered by the deceased to the cause of the Brahmo 
Somaj. Finally, the students of Calcutta met and decided to com- 
mence a subscription in order to raise a monument to his memory. 

The second day after death, the body, which was literally hidden 
by flowers, was carried on a bier to the place of cremation on the 
banks of the Ganges. The banner of the New Dispensation was 



THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 285 

borne at the head of the procession, and behind the corpse there was 
a vast crowd who joined in singing the hymn : '•'■Jaijai^ Satchita Nan- 
dun jai^^^ (Glory to him who has a pure heart.) The bier was placed 
on a pile of sandal-wood, whilst the Upadhyaya chanted the mantras 
of the Brahmoist ritual. As the orb of day was sinking beneath the 
horizon, the eldest son of the deceased, Karvuna Chunder Sen, placed 
the torch to the funeral pile, pronouncing these words : " In the name 
of God I convey the sacred fire to these last remains. Let the mortal 
part burn and perish ; the immortal part will survive. O Lord, the 
liberated soul rejoices in thee, in thy blessed abode." The flame then 
rose in the quiet evening air, whilst all present repeated the verse : 
" Glory to the Redeemer who is Truth, Wisdom and Joy. Divine 
grace alone prevails. Peace ! (sdnti), Peace ! Peace ! " By about 
eleven o'clock, all was over. The ashes of the late minister were 
placed in an urn and carried provisionally to the Chapel adjoining 
Lily Cottage. 

Is the day come for justly estimating Keshub's work? For my 
own part, I do not hesitate to assert that the path upon which he had 
entered was full of equivocal positions and dangers. With the tendency 
of the Hindu sects to deify their gurus, it is quite possible that the 
founder of the New Dispensation may be raised to the dignity of an 
Avatar, and his Church become a simple variety of the Vishnu sects. 
All those who have studied the past of India know, as M. A. Barth 
has so well said, that the history of religious reforms among the 
Hindus, is a story of perpetual and painful re-commencement. 
Vigorous efforts and high purpose mark the early stages, which are 
soon followed by irremedial decay ; while the final result is another 
sect and a new superstition. ^ 

Already, indeed, certain of the ceremonies which Keshub introduced 
into his Church have proved how much his teaching tended to develope 
the spirit of contemplation and renunciation, which has always been 
a scourge for Indian whilst others were but regrettable landmarks 
along the road which leads to the creation of theocracies. And further, 
it is very clear that the excess of his symbolism was calculated to 
absorb the activity of his disciples in a multitude of odd and hetero- 
genous rites, absolutely at variance with the requirements of the 
modern spirit, if we take up the European stand-point. 

I. A. Barth, Les Religions de VInde. 



284 THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

But regard must be had to the external circumstances under which 
a religious reform is carried on. It remains to be seen, therefore, 
whether the New Dispensation, with all its mystic and ritualistic 
exaggerations, is not better fitted to act upon the popular mind of 
India, than the sober and more enlightened faith of the Adi or even 
of the Sadharan Somaj. 

Keshub, and this point cannot be too strongly emphasized, was, in 
spite of his errors and eccentricities, a person of superior power, one 
of those men who may become a Buddha, a Mohammed, or a T.uther, 
according to the nature of their surroundings. To have seen him or 
even to have taken note of his work, was sufficient to explain the 
ascendancy he possessed over his followers, and which he also exercised 
upon the minds of the masses. On more than one occasion, I have 
severely condemned his acts, and almost despaired of his future. But 
whenever I turned to his discourses and writings, I again felt in some 
measure under the charm which arose from his personalty and genius. 

The following critique of Keshub's character by one of his principal 
opponents, Sivanath Sastri, the missionary of the Sadharan Somaj, will 
probably not be without interest : — " Throughout his career, Mr. Sen 
has been distinguished for three things : a proud and indomitable 
spirit, a fine and powerful intellect, and a strong and vigorous will. 
. . . Added to these, there is an earnest, fervid, and enthusiastic 
temperament. . . . Like every other proud nature, he is shy to 
strangers, but full of pleasant humour to friends, mild and affable to 
inferiors, but haughty and untractable to the least show of superiority 
in others, and specially under opposition, conceiving his plans in silence 
and carrying them out with but half-revealed purpose. He does not 
condescend to take into his confidence even his immediate associates 
about his plans, and has no friend properly so-called. He is not alto- 
gether above the art of over-reaching an enemy by clever shifts or of 
trying to compromise him by unfair and ungenerous means. At times 
he is carried away by his wounded pride to use harsh and abusive 
epithets against his opponents. Yet he has been an example to many 
of us of purity of private conduct, earnestness of purpose and of devo- 
tedness to noble pursuits. Many of his ways have been certainly those 
of a man of faith, and many of the principles of action he enunciated 
for his Church show considerable depth of spiritual insight and keen- 



THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 



285 



ness of moral perception. . . . But Mr. Sen has, in the meantime, 
allowed himself to be led astray by an unfortunate idea — the idea of 
being a singularly inspired man." ^ 

It is incontestable that the religious ideal which Keshub set before 
his disciples lacks neither in opportuneness nor in elevation. He 
formulated it himself, in a somewhat eccentric fashion, by making the 
subjoined parallel between the old and new man, which was published 
in the second number of his journal. The New Dispensation : — 



"The Old Man. 

Asiatic or European. 

Hindu or Christian. 

Mystical recluse and sleepy 

Quietist. 
Trinitarian, who hates Unitarian. 



"The New Man. 

Asiatic and European. 

Hindu and Christian. 

Mystical philanthropist and 
practical Quietist. 

Unitarian, who believes in the 
trinity of Unitarian manifes- 
tations. 

Eclectic, who includes all sects. 

Chemical fusion in life. 



Sectarian, who excludes all other 

sects. 
Mechanical combination of 

truths and characters by 

the intellect. 
Exceptional inspiration. 
Believes in invisible spirit or 

visible idols. 
Honours Christ, but reviles 

Socrates and Chaitanya. 
Sees multiplicity and confusion. 
Destructive. 
Sees only errors in others, and 

frets. 
Decrepit and cold." 

The really questionable feature of the New Dispensation is the 
doctrine of Adesh. When, in accordance with the doctrine of Kant, 
we seek the voice of God in the intuitions of conscience, we are 
simply acting upon an ennobling and fruitful theory, as evidenced by 
the American Transcendentalists. Still it must be on the condition 



Universal inspiration. 
Beholds the Spirit-God. 

Honours all prophets in Christ. 

Sees unity and harmony. 
Constructive. 

Sees only their virtues, and im- 
proves. 
Always fresh and young." 



I. The New Dispensation and the S&ddran Brahmo SomdJ, page 58. 



286 THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

that we subject our impulses to the control of observation and reason. 
Keshub, in truth, seemed to admit that in order to constitute Adesh, 
inspiration must be based upon certain "objective considerations," 
resulting from some particular set of circumstances and leading to the 
same conclusion. As regards the marriage of his daughter, for in- 
stance, these were : the political necessities of Couch-Behar ; the 
personal merits of the young Maharajah ; the advantages to Brahmo- 
ism which were likely to result from this union, &c. But if objective 
indications are to concur with inspiration, to determine any given line 
of conduct, what purpose is served by the Adesh ? And if they do 
not thus concur, what is to decide between them ? To see the dangers 
of this system, it suffices to listen to the extreme champions of the 
New Dispensation, such as the Pandit Dourga Das Ray, who, in 
urging the uncertain and relative character of the moral laws, denies 
to conscience the right to decide in matters of inspiration, and declares 
that the commands of God are independent of the " so-called common 
morality,"! or further, like the writers of the Theistic Record of Dacca, 
who expressed themselves thus in t88i : "Nothing with a Brahmo is 
' good ' which is not a command of God, and nothing is His command 
unless every man receives it directly from Him. We have no scrip- 
ture, no revelation, no Shastra, no Veda, save His words : every little 
thing of our life — whether we should eat pumpkins on the first day of 
the month or go towards the north on a Tuesday — should be regulated 
by His living command. Here then is something peculiar, something 
new. We Brahmos have to go to God for every trifle that we do, 
while people of other religions have books, men and their own con- 
science for their guides. "^ This is the stumbling-block at which the 
New Dispensation will fall and be dashed to pieces, if the most 
enlightened of Keshub's followers do not, now their leader is gone, 
hasten to correct his theory of Adesh, by restricting it on the one 
hand to super-sensible things which transcend experience, while 
extending it on the other, in a certain measure, 'to the whole human 
race, and subordinating it to the authority of reason, which is also of 
divine origin. 

With the exception of this unfortunate theory which is not, indeed, 
an essential element of the New Dispensation, Keshub does not 

1. Brahmo Year-Book for 1880, page icxd. 

2. Brahmo Year-Book for 1881, page 95. 



THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 287 

appear to have abandoned the Rationalistic method in spite of his 
exaggerated mysticism. Among the ceremonies and discourses to 
which I have alluded, there are certain details which may provoke a 
smile, as does the language of all religious and social symbolism of an 
unfamiliar character. Then again, it seems to me that the excess of 
ritualism has proved obnoxious, above all in England, to persons who 
from education and surroundings feel a profound repugnance for 
everything that savours of a sacerdotal or even of a sacramental 
order. It is but just to remark, however, that such is by no means 
the characteristic of the rites originated or reproduced by Keshub. 
He has told us so himself in formal terms : — " Do we mean to establish 
the Rice Ceremony (the Sacrament of Communion) and the Flag 
Ceremony as permanent institutions in our Church ? No. They are 
meant to explain and spiritualize and fulfil corresponding ordinances 
in the older Churches. As the pulpit of the New Dispensation ex- 
pounds texts in the ancient Scriptures, so are these novel ceremonies 
offered as practical sermons on the deep philosophy of the rites 
observed in previous dispensations. "^ 

Nor can Keshub be charged even with having aimed at the estab- 
lishment of an esoteric form of faith, to be allegorically interpreted by 
its adepts and accepted literally by the crowd. He let no opportunity 
pass, indeed, of explaining the real significance of his symbolism. 
" We do not believe," he added, in the article from which I have just 
quoted, "in lifeless ceremonies. Read absorption in place of 'rice,' 
and the kingdom of God in lieu of ' banner,' and our metaphors will 
become clear." 

We have already seen the meaning he attached to his celebration 
of baptism and to his communion of saints. When celebrating the 
Arati according to the rites of the Vishnuites and the Sikhs, he was 
accustomed to place on the altar the traditional panchadripa (a lamp 
with five branches which the devotees are in the habit of swinging 
before their idol), and he would explain it, at once, as the symbol of 
the five inner lights which permit the worshipper to rise to the con- 
templation of the divine countenance : purity, love, faith, bhakti^ and 
knowledge. As to the sacrifice of the Homa^ Protab Chunder 
Mozoumdar thus reveals to us its significance: "The recent Hom 
ceremony performed by the minister and missionaries of the Brahmo 

I. The second number of The Nezv Dispensation^ 31st of March, 1881. 



288 THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

Somaj of India, represents only the idea of burning the passions in 
effigy. The bundle of dry hard sticks represented the lusts of the 
flesh tied to the heart by a knot which cannot be loosened, each 
passion strengthening the neighbouring ones, and all of them together 
forming a mass of impenetrable obstruction to piety and holiness, able 
to resist strong and repeated attempts to break through. Nothing 
but fire can destroy such a heap of tough unbreakable wood. That 
fire is the fire of holy will, kindled and breathed upon by the Spirit of 
the eternal fire of holiness. The wind and clarified butter that aid 
the flame are our prayers and aspirations, the great aid of a pure 
human will."^ 

We may not care for allegories, nor, speaking generally, for symbolism 
at all ; but in this respect the New Dispensation does not difler from 
an institution which is most extended and most popular in all Anglo- 
Saxon countries : Freemasonry, which also symbolizes by external 
rites the traditions of its history and the principles of its humanitarian 
philosophy. 

And if the ceremonies instituted by Keshub, instead of being drawn 
from a single system of religion, are borrowed indifferently from all, 
is there any ground for blaming him in this which is, in reality, a 
pledge and a proof of toleration ? The fusion of all the forms of 
faith into a single religious synthesis, has been, in every age, the 
dream of many a large and enlightened mind in advance of its time. 
Aristotle, Cleanthes, Seneca, Maximus of Tyre, Confucius, Kabir, 
the neo-Platonists, the Authors of the Upanishads, the Sofis of Persia, 
as well as German Idealists and the contemporary students of 
comparative theology, have all shown the identity of the religious 
sentiment under th^e multiplicity of its manifestations. A few thinkers 
such as Proclus, Jambilicus and Alexander Severus in antiquity, 
Akbar in India during the Middle Ages, and, to a certain extent, 
Auguste Comte in our own day, have even attempted to found a 
universal religion — not, indeed, by eliminating the differential elements 
of the principal forms of faith, after the manner of English Theism 
and American Transcendentalism — but by commingling either the rites 
and symbols or the names and forms under which their adherents 
conceived the Supreme object of worship. 

Such, too, was the work commenced by Keshub, and if there is 

I. The Theistic Review and Interprete7- of 1881, page 15. 



THE SYNCRETISM OF THE NEW DISPENSATION. 289 

any difference, it is that the author of the New Dispensation suc- 
ceeded in founding a religion, while his predecessors scarcely did 
more than carry their syncretism beyond the sphere of individual 
conception. Roman Polytheism stands alone, perhaps, as the only 
instance of an ultimate amalgamation of this kind ; but even in that 
case, it was a juxta-position, rather than a synthesis of the various 
forms of religion practised in the Empire. It was reserved for the 
New Dispensation to offer us a living Church formed, as a single con- 
ception, with materials drawn from the most diverse faiths, and this 
is not one of the characteristics which contribute least to render its 
development so interesting to all who are engaged in the study of 
religious history. 



CHAPTER XV 



BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 



Present strength and ramifications of Brahmoism — Dayananda Sarasvati Sivami 
and the Vedantine movement of the Arya Somajes — The Theosophic Society of 
India — Orthodox Associations of the Dharma Sabhas — Religious movements 
beyond the pale of Hinduism — The Anjumans — The Guru Jurgi among the 
Bhils — Disintegration of Hinduism.: What will take its place? — Condition and 
prospects of Islamism in India — Negative result of Christian missions — Parallel 
of religious progress between the Aryans of the East and of the West — Satisfaction 
offered by Brahmoism to the aspirations of the Hindu mind and the requirements 
of modern civilization — Affinity of Hindu speculation to our most recent scientific 
theories — The idea of the Unknowable in Brahmoism — Re-action of Oriental 
genius upon the religious culture of Western society — Professor Tyndall's pre- 
diction to Protab Chunder JMozoumdar — Max Miiller and Von Hartmann's 
opinions as to the influence which the beliefs of India are destined to exercise 
on the religious future of the West. 



It was to be feared that the divisions of Brahmoism would prove 
fatal to the cause of religious RationaUsm in India. From the inevit- 
able confusion of such schisms, more than one superficial observer has 
come to the conclusion that the work of Ram Mohun Roy is about to 
disappear by the return of some to the bosom of Hinduism, and the 
conversion of others to European scepticism. Isolated cases may 
have justified this double prediction ; but the signs of disorganization 
have been of short duration, and to-day, Brahmoisrn has resumed its 
former progressive course. In 1877, on the eve of the secession of 
the Sadharan Somaj, its Churches were 107 in number. To-day they 
exceed 173;^ and its journals or periodical publications have in- 
creased by ten within the same period. 2 

1. Brahmo Year Book for 1872. It must be borne in mind, however, that 
some of these new Somajes are due to schisms in the old congregations, as a result 
of the events of 1878. 

2. Taking into account the entire number, there are seventeen printed in 
Bengali ; four in English ; one in both these languages ; one in Urdu ; one in 
Canara ; two in both Tamoul and English ; two in Telugu and English ; and one 
in English and Marathi. A single one of these organs appears daily : the National 
Paper of Calcutta ; and eight are weekly. Among the monthly publications in 
Bengali, there is one for women, another for workmen, and a third, which is illus- 
trated, for the use of children. (See the Brahmo Year Book for 1882.) 



292 BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 

The Brahmos may be divided at present into four groups : 

I. The Somajes which have accepted the New Dispensation. 'J'hey 
consist of about twenty of the old congregations which remained 
faithful to Keshub, together with a certain number of recent formation. 
Some of these Somajes vie with the Calcutta congregation in their life 
and fervour. This is specially true of that at Dacca, which is dis- 
tinguished by the number and originaUty of its pubUcations ; that of 
Chittagong, which has become a centre of active proselytism among 
the masses of the people; and that of Bhagalpour, where the new 
mandir bears on its facade both a cross and a crescent, interwoven 
with symbolic representations belonging to Buddhism and to the 
various Hindu faiths. At Calcutta, too, Keshub attracted larger and 
larger numbers down to the close of his work.i Meanwhile, and it is 
a happy~ augury, there is a new growth of the institutions designed to 
promote educational and social reform, which vfeie more or less neg- 
lected for several years. The principal educational establishment, the 
Albert School, which was affiliated to the University of Calcutta in 
1 88 1, contained at that date 667 pupils. The Indian Reform Asso- 
ciation has laid the foundations of an Institution for the superior 
education of women, which was opened in 1883. T/te Indian Mi7'ror 
has been replaced by a journal that is better edited, The Liberal^ with 
a supplement devoted exclusively to religious questions. 

II. The congregations which constitute the Sadharan Somaj. This 
association represents, as we have seen, the true tradition of Brahmoism, 
and it has taken up, as a part of its work, all the institutions intended 
to promote religious and social reform, which had long been the 
monopoly of the Bharatbharsia Somaj. The Somajes which it com- 
prises within its pale are twenty-nine in number. Its principal organ 
in the English language is The Brahmo Public Opi7iion^ which discusses, 
from an elevated stand-point, religious and political questions relating 
to India. The President of the Association is a contemporary and 
friend of Ram Mohun Roy, the Babu Chib Chunder Seb. 

III. The Adi Somaj. One result of the crisis described in the pre- 
vious chapter, has been to recall public attention to the Adi Somaj of 
Debendra Nath Tagore. This latter, who could hardly have imagined 
a more striking form of revenge in relation to Keshub Chunder Sen, 

I. Brahmo Year Book for 1881, page ii. 



BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 293 

spontaneously approached the Sadharan Somaj, and in 1880, the 
oldest Church of Brahmoism was seen joining with the youngest to 
celebrate in a fitting manner the fiftieth anniversary of the Rajah 
Ram Mohun Roy. It is now several years since the venerable 
Debendra Nath Tagore withdrew to the Himalaya Mountains, where 
he enjoys well-earned repose. From time to time he quits his retreat 
in order to preside over certain religious ceremonies in neighbouring 
Somaj es, and he is always welcomed with sympathy and respect by 
both the old and new Brahmos. His successor in the presidency of 
the Association is the Babu Raj Narain Bose, a speaker and writer of 
great merit, who has been engaged since 1880 in the publication of 
the complete works of Ram Mohun Roy in the English Language.^ 
The Adi Somaj professes the same religious principles as the Sadharan 
Somaj ; but it maintains a certain reserve as to the abandonment of 
ancient social usages.^ 

IV. A certain number of congregations which share the religious 
opinions of the Sadharan Somaj, but have remained on good terms 
with the New Dispensation, since they have refused to take sides with 
either of the two groups and have welcomed with the same heartiness 
missionaries from both.^ 

V. The Prarthanas Somajes (Associations for Prayer) of Eastern 
India. These are, generally speaking, congregations which, while 
they wholly reject the authority of the Vedas, display a conservative 
tendency both as to doctrines and ceremonies. The chief of them, 
the Prarthana Somaj of Bombay, has even inscribed over the door of 
its place of worship, the celebrated motto of the Vedantine Pan- 
theism : Ekam eva advittjam (a single Being without a second.) ^ 
The same state of things is to be met with in some of the Somajes 
of the South, as for example at Madras, where the Brahmo Somaj of 
Southern India, while treating Brahmoism as a simple form of 
universal religion, yet considers it to be the logical development of 
Hinduism, and chooses its devotional readings exclusively from the 
Hindu Scriptures.* 

Finally, these 173 associations form so many centres for the spiritual 

1. The first volume, which is the only one that has yet appeared, is in Svo., and 
consists of 8i6 pages. 

2. Brahmo Year Book for 1880, page 120. 

3. Monier Williams, Hinduism, page 150. 

4. Brahmo Year Book for 1882, page 56. 



294 BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 

regeneration of India, and though they may differ as to questions of 
form and method, and even of principle, they none the less represent, 
as a whole, the power of religious Rationalism among the Hindus.^ 

Still, Brahmoism does not figure as the only agency of reform which 
is exciting the attention of the populations of Hindustan. '' Ramifica- 
tions of this sect and kindred sects moving in a parallel direction," 
recently wrote Sir Richard Temple, " have spread through the three 
Presidencies of Bengal, Madras and Bombay. "^ 

In addition to the groups which have taken up a Rationalistic 
stand-point, there have been formed in several localities, and particu- 
larly in the Punjaub, what are called Arya Somajes, whose members 
have adhered to that phase of Vedaic infallibility, which was given up 

I. It may be well to note here one or two points, which will bring the history of 
the Brahmo movement down to a later date than that referred to in the text. To 
begin with the New Dispensation Church at Calcutta : After the death of Chunder 
Sen, a schism took place among his immediate followers, owing to the determined 
opposition of the majority of his missionaries to Protab Chunder Mozoumdar's de- 
sire to occupy the deceased minister's pulpit. Three of these missionaries and the 
majority of the congregation sided with him, but the opposition party prevailed and, 
after more than a year's interval, a compromise was arrived at which was, in reality, 
destructive of Mozoumdar's claim, the pulpit being left vacant in memory of Keshub. 

Happily a feeling of reconciliation between the different sections of the 
Brahmo Church is manifesting itself. It may be mentioned in illustration of this, 
that Mozoumdar has advanced nearer to the Sadharan Somaj, and even took part 
in their anniversary services last January (1885) for the first time. There has been, 
indeed, as I learn from Miss Collet, a gradual tendency during the last two or three 
years towards the healing of the divisions caused by the Couch- Behar and New 
Dispensation schism. At Lahore and Madras, for instance, the two severed 
Somajes have been re-united, while in several other towns where the rival Somajes 
have not officially coalesced, the feeling between them has become far more friendly. 
This desirable change would seem to be in some measure the result of Chunder 
Sen's death, for he forbade his missionaries to preach at Somajes which had pro- 
tested against his New Dispensation — a prohibition which has since been relaxed. 

At present the state of the Brahmo Somaj generally is fairly prosperous, and 
the Sadharan Somaj is doing extremely well. The number of registered members 
belonging to the latter in January, 1885, was 829, while the aggregate number of 
Brahmos belonging to the different sections of the Church is estimated at about 
4,000. These belong to or form over 190 different Somajes in various parts of 
India. Over forty journals are now edited by Brahmos, and are, more or less, 
devoted to the advocacy of their principles. Hence, though the number of avowed 
adherents of the Brahmo Church may seem small in comparison with the vast popu- 
lation of India, it must not be forgotten that many a Somaj is a centre of life and 
light in its own locality, so that the magnitude of the movement is not to be 
estimated by mere statistics. Besides, there is evidently a strong under-current of 
interest flowing on in the minds of many unavowed adherents. Signs of this have 
been frequent in the history of the movement, and they were not lacking at the 



BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 295 

more than thirty-five years ago by Debendra Nath Tagore and the 

Adi Somaj. These associations, which claim to occupy the platform 

of Revelation while they reject Polytheism, are due to the initiative 

of a Brahman of the Guzerat, Dayananda Sarasvati Sivami, who for 

several years travelled through India from North to South and preached 

a purely spiritual worship, founded on the existence of one God, the 

maintenance of the doctrine of metempsychosis and the infallibility 

of the four Vedas.^ Mr. H. G. Keene stated, in an article in The 

Calcutta Review of April, 1879, that the Arya Somaj was gradually 

extending in India and had connected itself with a Theosophic Society 

imported from the United States. 

There exists at New York, an association which, under the title of 

The Theosophical Society, claims to be in possession of profound 

meetings held at the beginning of the present year (1885) to celebrate the fifty-fifth 
anniversary of the foundation of the Somaj. Speaking of the meetings in question, 
the Indian Messenger of February ist says : — "By the grace of God, the fifty-fifth 
annual festival of the Brahmo Somaj has passed off very successfully. These are 
occasions vi^hen vi^e feel ourselves specially drawn towards God. Every soul turns 
to Him with great expectancy^ Friends meet from all parts of the country, and 
forgetting all the littlenesses of life, join soul to soul in prayer and thanksgiving to 
their common Father. What a beautiful sight is this, of hundreds of men and 
women gathering at a common spiritual feast ! Yes, it has been a veritable 
spiritual feast to us, and the Bread and Water of Life have been freely served by 
the All-holy Spirit. A blessed spirit of unity and brotherly sympathy pervaded 
the whole proceedings, and made them really sweet to the soul. We felt our hard 
hearts melting under the inspiration of the living God ; and young and old, men 
and women, all felt themselves embraced within the loving arms of God." 

At one of the meetings on this occasion a lecture was delivered by the pandit 
Sivanath Sastri, on "The New Life and its New Responsibilities," of which the 
journal just mentioned contains the following very interesting summary: — "The 
lecturer tried to show that the contact of the East and the W^est had given birth to 
a new life, and had called into existence new forces, many of which had been 
dormant in the race, and some of which had been altogether absent from the con- 
stitution of the national mind. Under the operation of the new spirit, time- 
honoured customs and institutions were fast dissolving, and a rapid process of 
disintegration was visible on all sides. The new spirit had brought on, many 
changes. Not the least — perhaps the most serious — of them was the decay of the 
natural spirituality of the race. Our educated young men were becoming secularized 
in their sympathies and tendencies. They were fast losing the old religious in- 
stincts and traditions of their forefathers. This secularization of thought, the 
lecturer said, was something appalling in its consequences. No one knew 
whither the rising generation of the educated Indians was drifting. The Brahmo 
Somaj was doing its best to foster the new spirit, to help in the development of 
the spirit of liberty which, like a solvent, was slowly doing the work of destruction 
in the mass of old customs and usages. Consequently it was the duty of the 
Somaj to infuse spirituality into the minds of the people, which alone could safely 
conduct liberty to a happy and successful issue. Liberty without moral self- 



296 BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 

knowledge preserved from ancient times in certain colleges of Tibet. 
The " brothers," as the initiated are called, state their object to be as 
follows : (i) The establishment of a universal fraternity ; (2) the study 
of ancient language, science, and religion ; (3) the investigation of the 
hidden mysteries of nature, as well as the psychic forces latent in 
man. The first and second of these objects form esoteric theosophy,. 
the third constitutes its exoteric form. As regards religion, they reject 
the doctrine of a Personal God, declare that men ought to consider 
themselves but a transient effect of a self-existent, universal, and 
infinite Cause, abandon the supernatural, and take their stand on 
the ground of pure science. But, at the same time, they admit that 
together with the facts established by the ordinary processes of obser- 
vation and induction, there exist phenomena and occult laws, the 
knowledge of which is only to be obtained by a certain exercise of the 
will, with contemplation, abstraction, fasting and eastacy.^ 

This doctrine seems to be rather Hindu than American. Hence 
there is no room for surprise that it should have met with marks of 
favour among the adherents of Vedantismf when in 1879 the Theo- 
sophic Society of the United States sent four of its members to India, 
among whom were Colonel H. Olcott and the Countess Blavatsky.^ 

control and without the operation of the nobler moral and spiritual impulses of 
the soul, runs to license. But real moral self-control springs from deep spiritual 
convictions. Hence spirituality is the real legitimate guide of liberty. It was the 
duty of the Brahmo Somaj to develop this guiding principle." 

It will be seen from the foregoing statements and extracts that the great work 
of the Brahmo Somaj is still silently but surely progressing as a harmonizing and 
regenerative influej\ce in the midst of the complex forms of Hindu civilization, and 
that it is at least preparing the way for that new form of faith which will ultimately 
take the place of the ancient beliefs and superstitions of the country. — Translator. 

2. " Political Effect of Religious Thought in India," in The Fortnightly Review 
of January, 1883. 

3. Monier Williams, Hinduism^ page 150; Garcin de Tassy, Revue de la 
Litteratnre Hindozistajiie, 1876, page 92, and 1877, page 91. — The Arya Somaj 
of Lahore, 710 members in 1878 (Theistic Aiinual iox 1878 j. 

4. Hints 07t Exoteric Theosophy. Calcutta, 1882. The Theosophical Society and % 
its Founders. Bombay, 1882. See also W. C. Fink, Theosophy^ Exoteric and 
Esoteric, in The Calcutta Review of April, 1883. 

5. A notice of a work by this lady, Isis Devoilee, which must have been published 
at New York, informs us that the authoress, who was born in Asia, passed her 
childhood among the Kalmucks, Tartars, Persians, and other Oriental peoples, and 
her ripe age with the Hindus, the Tibetans, the Cingalese, and the Egyptians, and 
that she had thus an opportunity of studying the languages, literatures, traditions 
and mythologies of Oriental peoples. — Vide La Revue Politique et Litteraire of the 
24th of November, 1877. 



BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 297 

These " missionaries" had assigned to themselves the task of preaching 
"the majesty and glory of all the ancient religions," as well as that of 
warning the Hindu, the Cingalese, and the Parsi against the substitu- 
tion of a new faith for the teachings of the Vedas, the Tri-Pitaka and 
the Zend Avesta. Their activity was not restricted to India proper, 
.and impartial observers state that in the island of Ceylon they brought 
back to Buddhism thousands of natives who had been converted to 
Christianity.! The Theosophical Society of India takes the lead in 
this propagandism to-day, and its organ is The Theosophist, which is 
published in Madras. 

It is quite possible there are further movements which might be 
described, not only in Hinduism but also in the other faiths of India. 
There have been formed, for instance, at several places and above all 
among the Brahmans, societies called Dharma Sadhas (Associations 
of the Law), whose object is a return to the ritual and traditions of 
the Vedas. This has the appearance of an orthodox revival ; but in 
point of fact these organizations, as Mr. Barth shows, are the result 
of the critical spirit, and their aim is to develop sciences which tend 
to destroy superstition.^ As much may be said of the Anjumans, 
semi-literary and semi-religious societies, which have been estabhshed 
among the Mussulman population of India, for the spread of literary 
and artistic tastes, the cultivation of poetry and the study of the 
sciences which relate to religion. 

Together with every other section of the community, even the 
non-Aryan and as yet but half civilized populations, are being roused 
by the need for religious reform. Thus, while one portion of them 
are gradually abandoning their Fetishistic beliefs to accept Islamism, 
Catholicism or Hinduism, there has been recently seen to spring up 

1. Fifty-eighth Annual Report of the British and. Foreign Unitarian Association, 
London, 1883 ; page 48.— The Buddhist section of the Theosophist Society has 
recently published a Buddhist Catechism for the use of the Cingalese, with a preface 
by Colonel Olcott, who says : "There are abundant reasons to believe that of all 
the great religions of the world Buddhism is destined to be the religion which will 
be spoken of most in the future, and which will be found to present the least 
antagonism to nature and law. Who would venture to affirm that Buddhism will 
not be the religion of the world's ultimate choice ?" This Catechism, which is written 
in Cingalese and English, is irivested with the approbation of the High Priest of 
Sripada. (Revue de PHistoire des Religions. Tome VIII. No. i. 1883.) 

2. A. Barth, Op. City page 62. 



298 BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 

among the Bhils, a tribe of the Vindhyas mountains, a guru named 
Jurgi, who is preaching the existence of but one God, forbidding the 
use of strong drinks and condemning the destruction of any living 
creature. 1 

What will be the result of this fermentation of ideas? Hindu 
Polytheism, though still numbering two hundred millions of adherents, 
presents unquestionable signs of decay. It is possible, and even 
probable, that its death agony will be of long duration ; but its days 
are none the less numbered by the progress of civiHzation. The 
moment will come therefore when we shall have to face this question, 
which M. Earth asked without attempting to answer it: ''What will 
be the faith of India when its old religions, which are already con- 
demned to perish but tenaciously cling to Hfe, have been finally swept 
away?"2 

Here we must avoid a tendency whidh is nowhere more calculated 
to vitiate any estimate we may form of the future. I refer to the 
unfortunate habit which so often leads us to reason from the particular 
to the general. Thus, because a native of ability — Dwarka Nath 
Mitter-r-had devoted speech and pen to the service of Comtism, it 
was hastily predicted that India was about to pass at a bound from 
idolatry to the religion of Comte.^ In the same way, English Secularists 
are apt to imagine that India will be an early conquest to their opin- 
ions, simply because there exists at Madras a small group of native 
Free-thinkers, which is affiliated to the National Secular Society. And 
finally, every time any Christian Church succeeds in making a few 
converts of higher social standing than usual, it is 'contended that 
India is on the eve of embracing that form of Christianity, be it 
Catholic or Protestant, which the converts have adopted. 

It is clear that the various forms of Christianity — and even Comtism 
and Secularism — are influencing, and will continue to influence, the 

1. Garcin de Tassy, Revue de la Litterature Hindotistanie, 1876, page 92. 

2. A. Earth, Op. Cit, page 175. 

3. Dwarka Nath Mitter died near Calcutta in 1874. The Positivist Church of 
London erected a tablet to his memory, with the following inscription : — 

" Dwarka Nath Mitter, 

1832-1874, 

Principilo della Santa Milizia 

Nell Oriente." 



BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 299 

religious evolution of the Hindu mind ; but it is hardly likely that 
this evolution will borrow from any one of these factors its general 
and ultimate form. 

The introduction of European ideas, by overthrowing the ancient 
beliefs of India, has produced, in more than one instance, compara- 
tive religious indifference, and specially among the literary classes. 
In some cases, the result is a disdain of the ideal and an exclusive 
search for material enjoyment, which finds its earlier expression in the 
materialistic philosophy of the Carvakas.^ On the other hand, India 
has always had a weakness for theories of universal illusion — the 
Maya — which are to be met with at the heart of Atheistic as well as 
Pantheistic conceptions of the world. Hume himself and his exist- 
ing disciples do not go so far in their philosophic nihilism as the 
author of the Byom Sar and of the Souni Sdr, the contemporary 
poet Bhaktawar. We read in the first of these compositions : " From 
nothing all things are born ; in nothing all things perish. Even the 
illimitable expanse of sky is all hollowness. What alone has no 
beginning, nor will ever have an end, and is still of one character, 
that is vacuum." The Sourni Sctr is still more explicit : "All that is 
seen is nothing, and is not really seen. Lord or no Lord, it is all one. 
Maya is nothing \ Brahm is nothing. All is false and delusive. . . . 
The teacher is nothing; the disciple nothing; the ego and the non-ego 
are alike nothing.' The Temple and the God are nought; nought is 
the worship of nought, and nought the prayer addressed to nought."^ 

The majority, however, of the educated classes have remained pro- 
foundly religious at heart and in the tone of their thought. What has 
been said of th^Germans may be said of the Hindus : that even when 
they profess to be Materialists or Atheists, they still remain Meta- 
physicians, Idealists, or, in some measure. Mystics. Those who, 
fascinated by European science, profess to accept one of the systems 
of thought at present in vogue among us, seem to be specially influ- 
enced by the synthetic aspect of its doctrines. Even the Vedantine 
school appears to have been endowed with new life from its contact 
with European culture,^ and there is no reason why it should not 

1. Monier Williams, Hinduism, page 225. 

2. F. S. Growse, Mathura, a District Memoir. Agra, 1874, part i., page 19. 

3. See an interesting defence of the Vedantine philosophy, published by Prof. 
Pramada Dasa Mittra, in the loth volume of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic 
Society, 1878. ' 



300 BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 

completely emancipate itself from popular superstitions without losing 
any of its religious aspirations or even of its mystic tendencies. 

It may be asked, therefore, whether the Hindus will not confine 
themselves to replacing their ancient faith by one or other of the • 
religions which at present exist in India. Let us consider, then, the 
relative importance of these creeds and their chances of predominance 
in the future. ^ 

The Parsees constitute too small a group for comparison in a con- 
sideration of this kind. Besides, the religion of Zoroaster, which is 
perhaps the oldest in the world, shows no signs of proselytism. The 
Sikhs, again, are Httle more than a sect of Hinduism. As to the 
Buddhists, who also form to-day but a very small minority of the 
Hindu population, they could only regain an ascendancy by comply- 
ing with a two-fold condition : on the one hand, a radical reform of 
the Buddhist Church; on the other, a general development of Pessimist 
tendencies, of which there are no signs at present. — There remain the 
religions of the Koran and the Bible. 

Islamism numbers fifty millions of adherents in British India, 
which has led to the statement that England is the first Mussulman 
power in the world. As the reader may be aware, the followers of 
Mohammed are divisible to-day into three great sects : the Sunnites, 
by far the most numerous who render allegiance to the spiritual 
authority of the Sultan of Constantinople ; the Shiites or partisans of 
AH, who specially predominate in Persia ; and the Wahabis of recent 
origin, whose principal centre is in Arabia. These sects hold in com- 
mon : (i) The belief in One God, the Creator an(^Sustainer of the 
Universe; (2) the belief in a future life in which the good will be 
rewarded and the wicked punished; (3) the doctrine of a Divine 

I. Here are, as regards religion, the results of the Decennial Census taken in 
British India on the 17th of February, 1881, the Independent States being excluded 
from the computation : — 

Hindus (believers in Hinduism) 187,937,450 

Mohammedans ... ... ... ... ... ... 50,121,585 

Buddhists 3,418,884 

Christians (including foreigners) ... 1,862,634 

Sikhs 853,426 

Fetishists 6,426,511 

Other faiths, or those without any specified religion... 4,279,026 

Total ... 254,899,516 



BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 301 

Revelation by the intervention of the Prophets, and in the last place 
of Mohammed— a Revelation, indeed, which relates not only to 
spiritual matters but to all the forms of human activity ; (4) the con- 
viction that the Koran is the Hteral Word of God. 

The Sunnites go so far as to extend the gift of inspiration to the 
first Caliphs and to the principal doctors of Islam ; thus they consider 
themselves pre-eminently orthodox; they possess, however, a liberal 
school, the Shafites, who admit the possibility of religious progress, 
and profess, with regard to unbelievers, a toleration based upon 
universal morality. The Shiites refuse all special authority to the 
decisions of the Caliphs who succeeded Mohammed ; they proclaim 
the rights of individual interpretation with regard to the text of the 
Koran ; but they seem less strictly attached to Monotheism, inasmuch 
as they believe in the personification of the twelve principal divine 
attributes, and count on the advent of the Messiah. It is from their 
ranks that the Softs of Persia have sprung, whose Mystico-Pantheistic 
doctrine is not without resemblance to the Vedantine Philosophy. 
The Wahabis, who have been called, and not improperly, the 
Puritans of Islamism, accord authority to nothing beyond the Koran 
and the utterances of the Prophets; they condemn pilgrimages as 
well as the worship of saints and holy relics ; and their ideal is the 
return of the Islamic world to the position it occupied at the death 
of Mohammed. 

• India scarcely contains more than five milHons of Shiites. As ta 
the Wahabis, however small their numbers, they have had more than 
once to endure the rigours of the English Government in consequence 
of their fanaticism. Speaking generally, the Islamism of the lower 
classes is more or less imbued with Hindu superstitions ; among the 
educated Mussulmans, on the other hand, a certain spirit of liberal- 
ism prevails, and this has powerfully contributed to the development 
of the Anjumans. Not only is there to be found among these a most 
decided taste for the study of the sciences, but also a sincere desire 
to purify the religion of Mohammed by freeing it from its parasitical 
excrescences, with a certain religious eclecticism, kept, it is true, 
within the limits of the sects of Islam. In 1877, for instance, one of 
the most distinguished Indian Mussulmans, Said Ahmed Khan, a 
former judge at Benares, founded at Aligurth, a large Oriental 
college for both Shiites and Sunnites. He was followed in this 



302 BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 

course by the lamented Salar Yung, the Nizam's Minister, who 
did so much for the moral and material well-being of the kingdom 
of Hyderabad.^ 

It is difficult to foresee where this movement of intellectual emanci- 
pation will end. Islamism has to take but a single step to find itself 
in full sympathy with the Rationalistic Monotheism of the West. 
But it could not make this advance, which consists in the rejection of 
the supernatural origin of the Koran, without losing its distinctive 
characteristic, and so long as it abstains from taking this step forward, 
neither persuasion nor force will gain an acceptance for it among the 
masses of the Hindu people — even though we should be called upon 
to witness the restoration of a vast Mussulman power in India, as 
Mr. W. S. Blunt predicts.2 

Will Christianity be more fortunate? If Christian missionaries were 
not addicted to hope against all hope, they would have been long since 
discouraged at the uselessness of a propagandism which, after immense 
sacrifices and the constant efforts of half a century, has merely resulted 
in the conversion of a few hundred thousand natives out of a popu- 
lation of two hundred and fifty millions. This unsatisfactory state of 
things is admitted by the Anglican Bishops of India, in their collective 
letter to the English Clergy, of May, 1874. "There is nothing," said 
they, " that can at all warrant the opinion that the heart of the people 
has been largely touched, or that the conscience of the people has 
been affected seriously. There is no advance in the direction of faith 
in Christ ; ... the condition is one rather of stagnation." 

This avowal should not surprise us. When the missionaries begin 
to teach the Hindus the infallibility of the Scriptures, the Divinity of 
Christ, or the mystery of the Trinity, they either have to address 
themselves to the Orthodox, who, possessing analogous dogmas in 
their own theology, see no reason for exchanging them for beliefs 
which are more unfamiliar to their race, without being more in har- 
mony with their reason ; or else they have to deal with Rationalists, 
who, having outgrown the traditions of Hinduism by means of free 
inquiry, are anything but disposed to subject themselves to the yoke 
of a new Revelation. Thus Ram Mohun Roy said that, after giving 

1. Garcin de Tassy, Revue de la Litterature Hindoiistanie, Annee i8yy. 

2. W. S. Blunt, The Future of Islam. London, Kegan Paul, 1882. 



BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 303 

up the belief in a plurality of Gods or Divine Persons, which is held 
by several sections of Hinduism, he could not conscientiously and 
logically adopt an analogous system, however purified it might be. 

According to writers like Monier Williams and Garcin de Tassy, 
Indian missionaries, in order to be successful, should be drawn from 
that enlightened section of the clergy who possess a complete know- 
ledge of the religions which they are called upon to oppose. But it 
is just here that the difficulty lies, for the moment the missionary 
acquires a taste for the study of comparative theology, it is no longer, 
in his eyes, mere Pagan superstition which he subjects to the criterium 
of scientific methods, and the end is that he who went out to convert 
others, returns converted -himself. As illustrations of this, take the 
career of Mr. F. W. Newman in Syria, that of Bishop Colenzo among 
the Caffirs, and that of the Rev. — Adams in India, to mention merely 
the most noted cases. The only form of Christianity which succeeds 
in impressing the Hindu is its moral and humanitarian side. But 
Christianity, reduced to this element, is scarcely represented by any 
but the modern Unitarians— that is to say, by Brahmoism with an 
EngHsh name. 

In perusing the extracts I have given in the course of this work, 
the reader must have been struck by the resemblance between Brah- 
moism and liberal Christianity, both in doctrine and history. Certain 
views of truth which are expressed every day in Unitarian pulpits and 
in the works of liberal Protestants, might be met with in the utterances 
of Brahmoists — ^just as passages are to be found in the publications of 
the Brahmo Somaj which would do honour to the pen of a Channing 
or a Parker. When Keshub Chunder Sen, and, at a later time, 
Protab Churrder Mozoumdar, preached in certain Unitarian churches 
of Great Britain, their hearers, as one of them told me himself, might 
have easily imagined themselves listening to their customary ministers, 
who had become slightly Orientalized in manner and expression by a 
long residence on the banks of the Ganges. Doubtless, there is 
something both impressive and remarkable in this contact of two 
currents of religious thought which, having originated in Central 
Asia and moved in opposite directions with the Aryan migrations 
five or six thousand years ago, are thus meeting on the common 
ground of an eclectic and rational faith as the result of a like evo- 



304 BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 

lution. Still, if this synthetic faith is to spread in India, will it not 
be in its native form and with its national badge ? 

Brahmoism has retained the elements which are indispensable for 
satisfying the traditional exigencies and the characteristic concep- 
tions of the Hindu genius. I shall restrict myself to mentioning, on 
this head, the importance which it attaches to the divine immanence, 
to a recognition of the claims of duty towards all living creatures, to 
the conviction that the struggle for truth and justice is continued after 
death, and finally to the influence of an element of the religious life 
which has almost fallen to a minimum in our Western civiUzation : 
the love of God. 

Whether it be a question of the Adi Soma], the Sadharan Somaj, 
or of the New Dispensation, there is unanimity of opinion on this 
last point. Here is a passage from a somewhat interesting pamphlet 
dedicated to the English Unitarians by the existing President of the 
Adi Somaj, Raj Narain Bose, " in the hope of aiding them in some 
measure, to give to their Church a tone more in harmony with the 
spirit of Theism : " 

" If I were to describe Theism in one word, it would be the word 
love. Theism can be divided into — firstly, a belief in the love of 
God to his creatures ; secondly, our love of God ; thirdly, doing the 
work he loves. It was love that created the world. God wanted to 
diffuse happiness to other beings and he created the world. It is God's 
love that still preserves the world. It is love of God to man that 
makes him take personal interest in him. It is love of God to man 
that entitles him to the appellations of Father and Friend. It is the 
love of God to man that makes him near' and easily accessible to 
man. It is the love of God to man that leads him to grant prayers 
and reveal religious truth to him. It is the love of God to man that 
leads him to promote the progress of his soul in a future state. It is 
an instinctive love of God that first draws man towards God. It is 
like the love of the new born insect for the . honey in the flower, 
which it has not yet tasted. It is love of God that makes man per- 
form the works which God loves. Morality is nothing but love. 
What does morality say ? Morality says love your neighbours, love 
your country, love the world, love the right. Love also implies 
knowledge- As we cannot love a friend if we do not know his merits, 
so if we do npt know the perfections of God, which constitute his 



BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 305 

lovliness, how can we love him ? If we do not know what is right, 
how can we love the right? All religion, therefore, is included in 
the word love. What is leading a religious life, but leading a life of 
love, thinking love, speaking love, diffusing an atmosphere of love 
around us?"^ 

The Constitution of the Prarthana Somaj of Surat declares that 
religion consists of devotion (bhakti)^ in union with morality (niti) 
and love (prem). It adds, moreover, that devotion is a combination 
of faith (erdddhd)i contemplation (prdsand)^ and virtuous conduct 
(saddchdr)."^ 

Even the Sadharan Somaj, though due to a re-action against the 
mystical excesses of Keshub, asserts that "the way to salvation is not 
through Pantheism, which regards sin and misery as delusions ; not 
through Asceticism, which aspires to uproot the desires and subjugate 
the body ; but through love, which teaches the soul to seek the will 
of the Father as the highest good."^ 

The entire history of the Hindu people bears witness to their invin- 
cible repugnance to every form of faith which is not based upon an 
exalted sentiment of Divine love and upon the possibility of attaining 
to an intimate communion with God : in other words, upon the bhakti 
and the yoga. But if we are to take into account this double tendency 
when estimating every attempt made to transform the beliefs of India, 
we must also admit that the spirit of the age lends itself to other 
methods and processes, even in the matter of religion and on the 
banks of the Ganges. Christianity, or, if the expression be preferred, 
the influence of Christian civilization, has developed in India an 
element which Mohammedanism was unable to create : a need of 
intellectual and moral activity, which has also its religious side, 
revealing itself in missionary, moral and philanthropic efforts, but 
which readily comes into antagonism with the different forms of con- 
templation and ecstasy. The doctrine most fitted to reconcile these 
contradictory elements is assuredly that which would have the best 
chance of acceptance among the Hindus. 

1. Raj Narain Bose, The Hindu Theisfs Brotherly Gift to English Theists. 
Calcutta, 1 88 1, page i6. 

2. Brahmo Year Book for 1882, page 84. 

3. Sivanath Sastri, The New Dispensation and the Sadharan Brahmo Sonidjy 
page 91. See also, on the same subject, an article of the Brahmo Public Opinion^ 
reproduced by Miss Collet in her Annual for 1880, page 92. 

W 



306 BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 

This is a truth which the different sections of Brahmoism have 
recognized, with varying degrees of clearness. " Communion (yoga)" 
said The Brahmo Public Opinion on the 26th of February, t88o, in 
an article dealing more or less with the New Dispensation, " sharpens 
the eyesight of the spirit. Through it we grow familiar with the veri- 
ties of the spiritual world ; through it objects of faith become objects 
of spiritual perception. But communion, if practised as the only 
means of spiritual culture, begets moral inanity and deadens the 
active energies of the soul. Like communion, religious frenzy (bhakti) 
has also its use and its dangers. A state of frenzy can never be the 
normal condition of the soul. ... It can be, and often is, 
induced by purely external and adventitious causes. . . . Besides, 
there is not much connection between such ecstatic display and real 
excellence of character. In the spiritual culture of a Brahmo, active 
and prayerful work should form the ground plan, the other two sup- 
plementing it for perfection." "The ultimate object of religion," 
says another number of the same journal (January 23, 1879), is to 
be at one with God, not only in sentiment, but in action, too. We 
are required not merely to worship, but also to serve God. Love is 
practical in its nature. If genuine, it must come out in action. Love 
that is not active is no love at all." 

It is equally necessary to take into account the changes which the 
diffusion of Western scientific knowledge will produce in the Hindu 
mind. Sir H. Sumner Maine said at the University of Calcutta in 
1865: "In the fight which the educated Hindu and the Christian 
missionary wage against error, such success as has been gained, such 
as will be gained, evidently depends on physical knowledge. . . . 
Happily some fragment of physical speculation has been built into 
every false system. Here is the weak point. Its inevitable destruc- 
tion leaves a breach in the whole fabric, and through that breach the 
whole armies of truth march in." 

The different sections of Brahmos have already had an opportunity 
of showing, by their educational institutions, how fully they have 
realized the necessity of founding the regeneration of Modern India 
on the diffusion of scientific knowledge. The cultivation of science 
is placed by the Brahmo Dharma in the list of duties towards God, 
and Keshub himself did not differ on this subject from Parker and 
Emerson. " A Theist," said he, " must love science with warm and 



BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 307 

enthusiastic love, for science is God's Scripture, written by his own 
hand, infallible and sacred."^ 

Up to the present Brahmoism has remained faithful to our spiritual 
and transcendental Theism. But there is no reason why it should 
not, in imitation of the Unitarian Church, adapt itself equally well to 
the ideas which tend to predominate in the philosophy of evolution. 
It must not be forgotten indeed that all our present systems of thought 
have their equivalents in the ancient speculations of the Brahmans. 
Before our era, for instance, the Sankhya school taught that the 
universe had arisen by a gradual evolution, from an incoherent, inde- 
terminate and homogenous substance, Frakriti, and had differentiated 
and developed itself by its own inherent forces. This system seems 
to have been at first Atheistic and Materialistic, and therefore more 
analogous to the doctrine of Haeckel than to that of Spencer. But 
the impossibility of explaining the transformation of matter into spirit, 
led later advocates of this bold speculation to admit the existence of 
spiritual energies, not to be traced back to the material manifestations 
of the Prakriti, and which had to be conceived of as uniting with the 
latter in the evolution of the universe. ^ Then again the difficulty of 
accounting for the relative and finite without assuming an Absolute 
substratum led them, as it has led the evolutionists of our epoch, to 
concede the existence of the Unknowable, the mysterious power from 
which matter and spirit alike emanate. There is a passage in the 
Upanishads which describes God as unknown by those who profess 
to know him, and known only by those who put forward no such 
claim.3 A profound remark this, and one which even Herbert Spencer 
himself would not disavow. 

Does it follow that religion and worship disappear with the possibility 
of defining the Absolute Being? The Brahmos have resolved this 
problem which is occupying so much attention in Christian society, 
and have given it the solution which tends to prevail in the most 

1. Essays Theological and Ethical , page 37. 

2. Sdnkhya Tatwa Kanmondi of Vachaspati Misra commences with these 
words: "The Pratrika is one; it is self-existent and in a state of equilibrium. 
It is the source and mother of all life. Souls (puroushas) are multiple, uncreated 
and associated with matter ; after a certain time they quit this material envelope 
and depart." 

3. It was in order to clearly mark the indeterminate nature of the Absolute 
Being that the Brahmans used the neuter gender in speaking of the Supreme. 



308 BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 

advanced liberal Protestantism : " In our religious culture, said the 
Brahmo Public Opinion of the 2nd of January, 1879, we should lay 
greater stress on the spiritual side of it than on the theological ; in 
other words we should distinguish between knowing God and loving 
God. All our attempts to know God, to divine and explain his 
purposes, to fathom the depths of his wisdom and goodness, are vain 
and fruitless. But we can always approach him from the side of 
love. Love is life ; this is rigorously true for our spiritual life. It is, 
moreover, the Key of Paradise." 

Doubtless, it is impossible to state with certainty that Brahmoism 
under one or other of its forms, is destined to become the future 
religion of India, or even that it is the approaching faith of the en- 
lightened Hindus, as Sir Richard Temple, one of those best acquainted 
with the country, has recently said of it.^ But what may be affirmed, 
as it seems to me, is : first that the reform of Hinduism will come, not 
from without but from within \ and further, that of all the religious 
movements observable in India, Brahmoism is the one which seems 
to most closely correspond with the present direction of Hindu 
thought. 

After having thus considered the influence which European thought 
has been able to exert on the beliefs of India, it would be of interest 
to inquire, both as regards the present and the future, whether the 
genius of India is not destined, in its turn, to re-act upon the philo- 
sophical and religious ideas of the Western world. 

It is only by way of suggestion that I refer here to individual con- 
versions of Europeans to the faiths of India. More frequent than 
might be supposed, on a priori grounds, they none the less form the 
exception.2 Nor shall I dwell upon the modifications which the direct 

1. Fortnightly Review of January, 1883. 

2. Garcin de Tassy, who kept an account of these ."perversions," as he called 
them, mentions the occurrence of seven in 1874 and of nine during 1875 5 among 
others he refers to the case of an English captain, who had adopted the Mussul- 
man faith at Bangalore. He also speaks of a young Englishman who had become 
a Yogui and had placed himself under the spiritual direction of the officiating 
minister of the Hindu Temple at Mount Jago. {Revue de la Litterature Hindoii- 
stanieiox 1874, 1875, 1876,) Less calculated to arrest public attention, but more 
significant and more numerous are the conversions to the philosophical ideas of 
India. Speaking from personal experience, I may mention the case of two English 
officials whose hospitality I shared during my journeys through the interior. Alike 



BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 309 

and continued contact of native ideas cannot fail to produce on the 
religious convictions of enlightened and independent minds. But 
when the problem is considered from a more general point of view, 
it becomes apparent that even to-day the influence of the two countries 
has been reciprocal ; and if we see in Brahmoism the Hindu equiva- 
lent of the views in favour among the more advanced minds of the 
Christian Churches, it would be unjust to under-rate the influence 
which has been exercised on the latter by the knowledge of the 
religious and spiritual systems due to the genius of Oriental peoples. 

Of all the religious literature of the East, our fathers knew only the 
vigorously Monotheistic Scriptures of the Semitic peoples — the Bible 
and the Koran. Suddenly, just where they imagined there was 
nothing but incoherent superstitions or indecipherable ruins, science 
began to reveal the profound, consistent, and, in some instances, sub- 
lime conceptions of the various systems embodied in the sacred books 
of the Brahmans, the Buddhists, and the Parsis, as well as among the 
tablets of Egypt and Babylon. Those who have unexpectedly found 
themselves in presence of the treasures of the Zend-Avesta, the Pitakas, 
and, above all, of the Vedas, are alone able to understand, from their 
own feeling of astonishment and admiration, the importance of the 
possibly unconscious transformation of thought, which the works of 
Orientalists have produced upon the intellectual and theological con- 
ceptions of Western society. If we have perchance awakened to 
activity the dogma of Divine transcendence among the Hindu re- 
formers, has not India, on the other hand, aided in bringing before 
the Monotheists of the West the conception of Divine immanence, 
which restores God to Nature, or rather Nature to God ? Where, in 
these days, do we find any trace of the cold and abstract Deism of 
last century, which, after having suppressed miracles, did not know 
what to do with its Divinity, who was inert and superfluous, having 
no relation to either nature or humanity? And if, in the majority 
of modern schools of religious thought, this Deism is replaced by 

versed in the languages of the country, they had distinguished themselves by pro- 
found researches, the one on the Buddhists of the Himalaya and the other on the 
legend of Krishna. At the time when I made their acquaintance, the former a 
Protestant by birth, had become a disciple of Schopenhauer, if not of Buddha ; 
the latter, who at first became a convert to Catholicism, had absolutely adopted the 
Vedantine philosophy of the Bhavagad Gita, which he sincerely believed he could 
reconcile with Catholic theology. 



310 BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 

more synthetic and living conceptions, which re-open the fountains 
of religious emotion while they facilitate the reconciliation, not of 
science with religion, but of religion with science, is not this change 
due, in some measure, to that philosophical literature of the East, 
which is pervaded by so profound a sentiment of close relationship 
between the three great factors of the religious idea — God, nature 
and humanity? 

Just before leaving Europe on the occasion of his first visit, Protab 
Chunder Mozoumdar had a long conversation with Professor Tyndall, 
who had just shocked orthodox England by his open avowal of 
religious scepticism at the Belfast meeting of the British Association. 
" Working in the cold hght of the understanding," said the eminent 
English physicist, " we feel here the want of the fire and vigour of the 
religious Life. This is all but extinct in England. In saying so, and 
in not accepting it at the hands of those who have it not, I have 
become unpopular. Let those who have the Life give it unto us. 
To you, therefore, in the East we look with real hope. Life came 
from those regions once before, and it must come again." ^ 

I cannot say whether we are to accept this compliment of the 
English scientist to the Brahmoist reformer in the light of a predic- 
tion, but its realization would not surprise those who have studied the 
present state of India, as well as the general history of religious 
thought, apart from all sectarian prejudices. 

Professor Max Miiller has shown in one of his finest works what 
the religious sentiment of Europe may borrow from India.^ In a 
work of a more speculative order. Von Hartmann has gone so far as 
to predict that the religion of the future will be a Pantheistic Monism, 
which will borrow the conception of the Divine immanence from 
India, and that of the Divine unity from the Judeo-Christian tradition. 
" Viewed from the stand-point of religious history," says he, " the aim 
we propose to ourselves can only be attained by a synthesis of the 
development of the Hindu and Judeo-Christian religions, in a form 
which will unite the advantages of these two tendencies of the human 
mind, and which, by remedying their mutual defects, will also be able 

1. Protab Chunder Mozoumdar, Missionary Operations in England^ in the 
Theistic Annual for 1875. 

2. The conclusion of the lectures on Z' Origine et le Developpement de la 
religion etudies a la hwiiere des religions de PInde, translation by M. J. Darmes- 
teter. Paris, Reinwald, 1879, page 327. 



BRAHMOISM AND THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF INDIA. 311 

to replace both, and to thus become, in the proper sense of the word, 
a universal religion. Such a Pantheistic Monism, whose metaphysical 
foundations are in perfect harmony with reason, would lend itself, in 
other respects, to the liveliest action on the religious sentiment, and 
would thus give to morals a solid vantage-ground more nearly allied 
to what is called religious truth than anything to be found in any 
other system ."1 

This truth Brahmoism thinks it has found, or is at least assured of 
its discovery, and its various Churches, however divided they may be 
among themselves, are agreed in accepting the words of Protab 
Chunder Mozoumdar, when he says, in his apology for the New 
Dispensation, "We have not now a doubt in our minds that the 
religion of the Brahmo Somaj will be the religion of India — y«a, of 
the whole world, and that those who really care for God, for piety, 
for purity, for human brotherhood, for salvation and for eternal life, 
will have, in one way or another, under one name or another, to 
accept the faith and the spirit that a merciful God is perpetually 
pouring into the constitution of our Church." ^ 

Without professing to share this absolute confidence, which is the 
gift of faith, we may nevertheless come to the general conclusion that, 
if the Hindu spirit continues to advance along the lines now forming 
its course, the world will yet witness more than one curious inter- 
change of religious, as well as- of moral and scientific ideas, between 
the two great branches of the Aryan race. Was it not from analogous 
interchanges between the ancient Pantheism and the Semitic Mono- 
theism in the crucible of Neo-Plationism, that Christianity itself took 
definite form in the second century of our era ? If India helps us to 
pass through the religious crisis which is now troubling society, and it is 
perhaps in a condition to do this, it will have deserved well of all those 
who are interested in the harmonious development of civilization. 

1. Von Hartmann, La Religion de PAvenir, ch. ix. M. von Hartmann has 
subsequently developed the same idea in his work, Das Religiose Bewustsein der 
Menscheit im Stufengang seiner Entwickelung. Berlin, 1882, i vol. 

2. Brahmo Year Book for i88i,page 137. Protab Chunder Mozoumdar visited 
England again during the summer of 1883, when he preached in several Unitarian 
Churches with the same acceptance as at the time of his first visit. In truth the 
position he has taken up belongs less to the New Dispensation than to the general 
principles of Brahmoism, in other words, to Transcendental Theism. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 



In beginning this work, I at first described how the moral and 
spiritual emancipation of which Luther gave the signal in his first cry 
of revolt against Rome, came into collision in England with the 
popular life of the day, and even with the motives which had led to 
the reform effected by Henry VIII. I showed in the second place 
how these obstacles were gradually smoothed away, partly by the 
natural and legitimate development of the Protestant principle, and 
partly by the intellectual and political influences at work in secular 
society. The reader was also enabled to follow the course of that 
evolution which manifested itself in turn by the progress of religious 
neutraUty in civil legislation, of Rationalism in the prevalent modes 
of thought, and of liberalism in the constitution of the Churches. 

Is it to be inferred that the existence of religion is threatened by 
this general repudiation of theocracy? I have shown that though 
certain sects in the Protestant Churches pride themselves on ignoring 
the discoveries of science and the aspirations of their age, and though 
others persist in seeking the means of reconciling the data of science 
with the belief in miracles by means of specious compromises, on the 
other hand, a large number of religious people and many congrega- 
tions have been able to meet all the claims of the modern spirit, 
without breaking the continuity of religious thought. This extension 
of the theological horizon, which is taking place more or less in all 
sections of Christendom, open to a modification of their dogmas, is 
specially manifest in those Churches which rest, not upon uniformity 
of beliefs, but rather upon identity of sentiment. It is the Unitarian 
Church which perhaps offers us the most perfect type of the latter 
condition. 

Anglo-Saxon Protestantism might be compared, indeed, to the 
division of an army which is executing a forward march. Day after 
day the main body pitch their tents on the very spot occupied by the 
advanced guard the night before, and this interchange of position is 
so fully maintained between detachment and detachment that at 
length the rear-guard takes up the position evacuated by the centre. 
Each corps loses as a matter of course a few stragglers on the march, 



314 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 

and sometimes also a few scouts ; but while the latter disappear from 
the field of battle, the former simply increase the strength of the 
columns immediately in their rear. Thus the relative positions remain 
unchanged, although the entire division keeps advancing nearer and 
nearer its goal. 

As we have seen, this progressive movement has not been restricted 
to the limits of liberal Protestantism, but has manifested itself beyond 
the pale of Christian communions in a two-fold direction — the one 
religious the other philosophical. 

In the first place, the progressive elimination of dogmatic elements 
has produced a " free religion " after creating a " free Christianity," 
on the basis of a distinction between religious sentiment and religious 
belief, to be henceforth regarded as absolute. Sometimes, as in the 
case of Mr. Moncure D. Conway's congregation, this radical concep- 
tion assumes the form of an aesthetic worship rendered to the human 
ideal. At other times, as among the Free Religious Congregations 
of the United States, it tends to practical applications and religious 
reform. Regarding it in this latter aspect, we have stated the results 
it is attaining, from a theoretical point of view, in the Comtist scheme 
of worship, as this is organized in London; and from a practical stand- 
point in the recently-formed " Societies for Ethical Culture " in New 
York, Chicago and Boston, which are already surrounded with insti- 
tutions making them true Churches of humanity. It should be 
remarked, moreover, that when in our day it is a question of carry- 
ing out some common philanthropical or moral aim, even the most 
creed-bound sects put aside their differences in order to unite, not 
only among themselves, but even with Agnostics and sceptics. 

In the second place, the rejection of a supernatural Bible has 
brought Theists of Christian antecedents into union with the eman- 
cipated minds of Jewish and Hindu origin. When it is remembered 
that this Theism rests on principles long since accepted as the essence 
of natural religion — in other words, the existence of God, the immor- 
tality of the soul, the imperative authority of the moral law and the 
spiritual value of personal piety, it would appear that we must really 
have found the final expression of religion, the supreme synthesis of 
all the reforms carried on in the name of reason and conscience. 
Thus we can hardly fail to be astonished that only some few isolated 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 315 

congregations, such as Mr. Voysey's in London and Mr. Samuel 
Johnson's at Lynn, U.S., should have sprung from this school. 
Nor will this surprise be diminished when iit is remembered that 
Theism, more or less the result of reflection, constitutes to-day the 
dominant faith of the enlightened classes in England and America. 

It is because Theism is above all things a personal faith that we 
meet with this result. With some, it represents merely the spiritual 
residuum left after the progressive elimination of orthodox dogmas. 
With others, it is the direct product of the intuitive method brought 
to bear upon the materials furnished by consciousness. But in the 
one case as well as in the other it leads to isolation rather than to 
religious grouping. As to the Theists who feel the need of spiritual 
fellowship, they often find sufficient to satisfy this without leaving the 
historic Church in which they have been brought up, as happens 
at times among the advanced Unitarians, the liberal Friends, the 
Reformed Jews, and even with certain sections of the Congrega- 
tionalists and Presbyterians. It is only in India that pure Theism 
has produced a whole net-work of fervent congregations ; and this 
result is doubtless as much due to the mystical temperament of the 
Hindu race as it is to the successive failure of all attempts to regener- 
ate the old native creed. 

Transcendental Theism, which seemed about to endow America 
with a new religion half a century ago, would have merited this bril- 
liant success had it been merely a question of the elevation of its 
principles and the fruitfulness of its teachings. But, like German 
Idealism, whose most mystical tendencies it represented, this move- 
ment, which Parker and Emerson rendered illustrious, fell a victim 
to its own excesses the very day it encountered its old adversary, 
Sensationalism, supported this time by the marvellous discoveries of 
the positive sciences. 

It is difficult to predict where victory will ultimately declare itself, 
in this conflict between the two philosophies which have always 
struggled for the mastery in the human mind. Rendered more 
circumspect by their reciprocal vicissitudes, they both seem to be 
approaching a common stand-point to-day, possibly with a view to 
making a permanent compromise, by the adoption of some system 
which, while it admits that positive knowledge is limited to the 



316 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 

phenomenal world, shall proclaim the absolute existence of a tran- 
scendent Reality. 

This double thesis, ^.it should be added, was long since adopted 
by Kant, and the success of the works which the centenary of the 
illustrious German philosopher has called forth, seems to indicate that 
his school after sustaining, without submission, one of the most violent 
assaults known to the history of philosophy, is still capable of resum- 
ing an ascendency over modern thought, or at least offering a starting 
point for some new synthesis of the Universe, in conformity with our 
present scientific knowledge. It is the Critique of Pure Reason 
which directly inspires an influential section of the so-called Agnostic 
school, and it is perhaps owing to its having sounded in time a retreat 
upon Kant, that English Theism has not shared the fate of American 
Transcendentalism. 

If we seek to ascertain what modern criticism has not been able to 
shake in the sphere of the super-sensible, we shall hardly find more 
than can be summed up in the four following propositions : — 
(i) The positive existence of a Supreme Reality which reveals itself 
in consciousness but which transcends all definition. 

(2) Our constant state of dependence upon this Reality, in which we 

live, move and have our being. 

(3) The certainty that this Power manifests its action by fixed and 

general laws. 

(4) A connecting link of some kind between this action and the 

tendency which prompts us to do our duty. 

The reader must not mistake the scope of this enumeration. It 
assuredly falls far short of the principles generally looked upon as the 
essence of natural religion. It fails, indeed, in my opinion, to 
embody all the beliefs which are to be reconciled with the existing 
affirmations of science. I have not made, for instance, any allusion 
in it, to the continued existence of the soul, although that hypothesis, 
as Mr. James Sully formally asserts, has not been rendered untenable 
by all the attacks of positive science. Even more, it seems difficult 
to accept the last two propositions without deducing from them, as a 
corollary, the existence of a mysterious end towards which, not only 
humanity, but also the whole economy of Nature is tending — whether 
we employ the term Final Cause or not, to indicate this goal. But I 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 317 

make no claim whatever to utter the last word of science in its bear- 
ing on religion ; my object has simply been to summarize the truths 
relating to a super-sensible order of things, which may be looked upon 
as generally admitted by contemporary scientists and .thinkers in, at 
least, the Anglo-Saxon world. 

Now — apart from the advocates of the old physiological Materialism, 
who are every day becoming more rare, and the small sceptical school 
entrenched within the universal Phenominalism of Hume, together 
with the group of orthodox Positivists who systematically refuse to 
discuss the question of the Unknowable — it may be affirmed that 
these four propositions are accepted by all who are in any way 
capable of exercising an influence on modern culture, from the liberal 
theologians of the Anglican Church and of the Dissenting sects to the 
evolutionists in harmony with Spencer and the critical thinkers of the 
Kantian school. We may see in them, therefore, not the faith of to- 
morrow, but its first outlines, the indestructible basis of every edifice 
of religious thought, the crypt, " still so narrow and obscure" in which 
Professor Max Miiller shows us the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Mussul- 
man, the Jew, and the Christian, each bringing the truest and purest 
elements of his creed to serve as materials for erecting the Church of 
the future. 

Even now, the Churches are not alone in furnishing either materials 
or workmen for this process of reconstruction. For though in the 
course of this volume I have been compelled to register the blows 
dealt by contemporary science at the old mode of argument in support 
of spiritual religion, I have also been able to relate the happy efforts 
of the Anglo-Saxon mind, either to strengthen the foundations of 
rational theology by new arguments, or to find fresh sources of religious 
inspiration in the harmony of the cosmos and the mystery of the 
Unknowable. It is not merely Christian ministers such as Dr. 
Martineau, Mr. Savage, Chad wick and Heber Newton or leaders of 
Free Congregations like Voysey, Conway, and Potter, or, indeed, 
literary men such as Prof Seeley, Mr. Graham, Matthew Arnold, &c., 
who have devoted themselves to this task. It is also the principal 
representatives of English science from Darwin to Herbert Spencer, 
with Wallace, Jevons, Tait, Balfour Stewart, Tyndall, and Dr. Car- 
penter — those whom preachers sometimes treat as Atheists as well as 
those who glory in the profession of Christianity. 



318 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 

" There is no more remarkable feature in the philosophy of our 
day, wrote Prof Fairbairn in the Contemporary Review of July, 1881, 
than its endeavour to baptize its highest ideals in the emotions or 
even enthusiasms of religion, to penetrate its ultimate doctrines with 
something of the Theistic spirit and power. This, perhaps the most 
common and characteristic tendency of all our modern systems, is 
due to many causes — to the nobler and more reverent spirit of the 
age ; to the sense of weakness deepening in man, with his growing 
consciousness of the immense energies he has, but the still immense 
work they have to do ; to the larger sense of humanity that marks our 
culture, making men sensitive to human misery, conscious of a kinship 
with the suffering millions that have suffered in the past ; to the new 
feeling of the omnipotence of the order that reigns around us, the 
almightiness of the law that binds into an ordered and organized 
universe the infinitude of material atoms and the multitude of spiritual 
units, each by itself so feeble and wayward, but altogether so mighty 
and glorious. But, however the tendency may be explained, it is 
there, urging men of all systems to find a symbol or substitute for 
Deity, a field and law for religious emotions." 

Mr. O. B. Frothingham indicated the same tendency in the United 
States, when he said in the preface of his Freedom and Fellowship in 
Religion : " The destructive period is about passed by ; the constructive 
period has begun. In science the greatest men are distinguishing 
themselves by positive generalizations. In philosophy, the lines are 
converging towards certain central principles. . . . For a long 
time yet the relentless armour must be worn ; but sentiment and 
imagination, recovering from the shock occasioned by the fall of their 
old idols are rallying courageously to do their part in peopling the 
new heavens with worshipful ideals and clothing in robes of glory the 
august forms which the seraphs at the gate of knowledge allow passage 
to the upper skies." 

There is in all this a sort of second edition of the intellectual 
phenomena, which occurred at the time of the Antonines. In a 
parallel of this kind it is, of course, necessary to take into account 
the special characteristics of each epoch. Ancient civilization was all 
at the surface ; it was not based upon a co-ordinated sum of positive 
knowledge ; it did not extend down to the humbler classes by the 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 319 

intervention of popular education ; it was restricted to a small area of 
the globe and therefore liable to be destroyed in any social cataclysm 
of a partial or local character. It might be compared, indeed, to a 
fine majestic oak which yields to a few strokes of the axe, applied to 
its roots. Our civilization, however, rather resembles those banyan 
trees of India, whose branches reach down to the soil and put forth 
rootlets which give rise to new trunks, so much so that to cut down a 
tree it would be necessary to uproot a forest. 

Then again printing and, above all, journalism, have wholly changed 
the conditions of religious propagandism. Controversy has reached 
jiew strata of society, and it has become more difficult *to close the 
ears of the pious world to any storm of criticism which may be raging 
beyond the pale of the Churches. Superstitions, again, have to run 
the risk of being tested in the light of thought, and impostures of 
being exposed before they have had time to crystalize into legends 
and dogmas. On the other hand, religious proselytism has seen its 
sphere of action increased tenfold, and the journalist tends to replace 
the missionary.! 

But all these social differences only serve to render more striking 
the analogy, if not of the facts and doctrines at least of the situations 
and tendencies, between contemporary society and the Pagan world 
during the first three centuries of our era. 

Then, as now, the old popular theology had been superseded by 
the progress of reason ; a natural reaction had led to the successive 
predominance of the sober and correct Deism of Cicero ; the Material- 
ism of Epicurus as sung by Lucretius ; and the systeni of humanitarian 
morality of which the Stoics made themselves the brilliant interpreters; 
it might have been supposed that Scepticism was about to gradually 
invade all classes of society. But after having measured the in- 
sufficiency of purely negative solutions, the best minds found themselves 
once more, by a sort of fatality, in the presence of the enigmas of the 
Sphinx, which has devoured so many religions and philosophies ; the 

I. In 1783, eleven years after the death of Swedenborg, two clergymen, who 
had been converted by the study of his works, inserted an advertisement in the 
English newspapers, soliciting the co-operation of those willing to join them in 
founding the New Jerusalem Church. Such was the commencement of Sweden- 
borgianism, which now reckons some thousands of adherents in Europe and 
America. 



320 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 

insoluable problem of origin and end, the disquieting questions of 
evil, of duty, and of destiny. 

Then, as now, there were champions of the past who attempted to 
justify the belief in revelations, prophecies and miracles by an appeal 
to the native incapacity of human reason. There were others again, 
who, more intelligent in their Conservatism, sought to reconcile the 
old forms to the new ideas by means of an ingenious symbolism. 
This solution, which was specially the work of the Mysteries, seemed 
calculated to make every one satisfied with a religion possessed of 
neither Bible, Councils nor Pope. Still it failed, as, according to the 
sincere avowal of Dean Stanley, the attempts to reconcile the letter 
of Revelation with the discoveries of science have failed in our 
own day. 

Looking at the question from another point of view, the knowledge 
of foreign systems of faith and worship — which, in reproducing itself 
in our day, has so largely contributed to the extension of our theo- 
logical horizon — had produced in the Roman Empire an Eclecticism 
eminently favourable to new metaphysical and religious conceptions. 
Not that it created many new forms of faith ; Paganism, at the time 
of Alexander Severus, was sufficiently broad to open its Pantheon to 
all the gods. But under cover of old traditions, and often within the 
shadow of ancient sanctuaries, new theological ideas tended, as they 
do to-day, to direct to worthier objects that reverence which was no 
longer given to the old divinities. 

Meanwhile, there was being developed in the lowest strata of society, 
a fermentation of religious sentiment which, finding its ancient chan- 
nels obstructed, now over-flowed in some popular eccentricity — now 
assumed the form of a vague philosophical Mysticism. It was the 
same " hunger for spiritual food," to use the expression of an Ameri- 
can observer,! which is showing itself to-day even in the populations 
of the Far West, and which so often assumes there the form of a 
belief in Spiritualism. Besides, whether we consider the calling up 
of spirits, the prophetic mutterings of a few eccentric heretics, or the 
extravagances of the Salvation Army, it suffices to glance at such 
works as Heterodox London^ by Maurice Davies, New America^ by 
Hepworth Dixon, or simply the miscellaneous reports of the Press 

I. See the passage which refers to the annual meeting of the Free Religious 
Association in 1881. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 321 

in the two hemispheres, in order to see that the Anglo-Saxons have 
no cause to envy the Syrian miracle-workers or the Egyptian Theo- 
sophists. The wonders wrought by the medium, Slade, are quite on 
a par with those of Simon the Magician. The badge adopted by 
Joe Smith has not found less sincere adherents than the Sybilline 
literature, and "General" Booth has made more recruits than Alexander 
tSe Paphlagonian or Apollonius of Thyana. It might be supposed, 
indeed, if we confined our attention to these superficial aspects, that 
while religions pass away superstitions remain. 

Happily, the analogy is not restricted to these lower manifestations 
of religious activity — the mere dross of the transfusion being effected 
in religious beliefs. There c^me a time, in the life of the ancients, 
when the old philosophical schools of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus 
ceased to satisfy the requirements of criticism as well as the needs of 
faith. Stoicism, after finishing its work of intellectual sanitation and 
of humanitarian propagandism, found itself, like the school of Littre 
and Mill to-day, insensibly absorbed by systems of thought which 
were more complete or at least bolder in their claim to interpret the 
universe. Now, the philosophers of that epoch had so refined away 
the idea of God, by attempting to reduce it to the idea of Absolute 
and of Substance, that they had dug an impassable abyss between 
man the Author of things. After the Judeo- Alexandrians, who had 
made of the Divinity a pure spirit, came the early Neo-Platonists, 
who declared this supreme principle to be above intelligence, as 
indeed superior to life and motion, and therefore beyond and above 
all conception. They admitted, however, that man, as a finite being, 
could enter into union with God by the self-obliteration of voluntary 
renunciation, and they sought, in the Oriental theory of emanation, 
which explained nature by the fall of spirit into matter, the meta- 
physical bridge so much needed to cross from the Unconditioned to 
the finite, from pure spirit to the phenomenal world. But their suc- 
cessors taught that God is as inaccessible as He is ineffable. 

Towards whom then could the prayers of the masses or the smoke 
of the sacrifices ascend ? Who then remained in the height of the 
heavens to respond to the aspirations and to sympathize with the 
anguish of the human heart? As all communication with the Un- 
knowable was now cut off, search had to be made for a mediator or 



322 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 

" second God." Each brought his Demiurgus. The Greek and the 
Persian offered to the masses the Sun, under the form of Apollo or of 
Mithra. The Egyptians turned to their god Hermes ; certain Jews 
suggested the Wisdom of the Eternal. Simon of Gitto proposed his 
Helen. Philo put forward the Logos ; the Apostle Paul the Christ 
of the Nazarenes, and the Evangelist John these two conceptions 
united. The reader knows the result of this competition, which 
decided for a period as yet incomplete, the religious destiny of 
Western civilization. 

Now, here again, after the long slumber of the Middle Ages, 
modern criticism has resumed the work of ancient philosophy. For 
a second time human reason has striven to reduce God to the concep- 
tion of an indefinable and inaccessible existence, without attributes 
common to the phenomenal world, and destitute of all possible rela- 
tion to the human mind. Hence speculation has hastened to begin 
a search for some intermediate agency to fill the void which the soul 
seems to hold in horror. 

Herbert Spencer admits that men will always have recourse to 
symbols to represent the Unknowable. But he abstains from pro- 
posing or recommending any. 

The Unitarians would retain a mediator in the person of a Jesus 
modified according to the demands of critical thought.^ 

The Transcendentalists of Europe, America, and India trust to 
conscience, which they regard as representing the Divine Word in man. 

Professors Tait and Balfour Stewart, returning by the path of science 
to a sort of Neo-Platonism, suppose that between God and the world 
there exists an invisible and eternal universe, of which phenomenal 
nature is in some measure a transitory materialization. 

Keshub Chunder Sen seemed inclined to resuscitate the doctrine 
of the hermetic chain which made all great reformers special mes- 
sengers of the Divinity, and his disciples of the New Dispensation 
appear to follow him in this tendency. 

Felix Adler and Moncure D. Conway offer for the veneration of 
their followers the ideal which the human mind forms of absolute 
perfection. 

I. This is only true of the older and more conservative school of Unitarians. — 
Translator. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 323 

Finally the orthodox disciples of Comte reserve their homage for 
Humanity personified in its noblest types, and if the majority of 
Comtists refuse to express an opinion respecting the existence of a 
Supreme Reality, some among them, in imitation of Mr. W. Frey, 
claim to reconcile their creed v/ith the philosophy of evolution, by 
making the Great Being Humanity the minister and mediator of the 
Unknowable. 

Now we might be tempted to see in these views the last gasp of a 
dying religion. But he who studies them closely and impartially will 
not fail to recognize in them the first signs of a new faith. If there 
is any conclusion to be drawn from the present work it is that rehgion 
is neither dead nor dying in the Anglo-Saxon race ; but that on the 
contrary, it has never been more tenacious of life nor more fruitful, 
and perhaps never nearer an entire renovation. 

Does it follow from this that we are even now in possession of the 
formula of this regeneration, and that in order to find the needed 
organism we have only to look round among the Churches which have 
sprung from the Rationalistic movement and select the one best fitted 
to absorb and outlive its rivals ? Logic and history alike bid us be 
on our guard against so hasty a conclusion. 

If it had been a question of fixing upon the form of religion destined 
to take the place of Paganism, when, about the middle of the first 
century, the Government of Tiberius expelled from Rome, as Sueto- 
nius tells us, the disciples of one Chrestus, who had created a disturb- 
ance in the Jewish quarter, some would have doubtless turned their 
eyes towards the Academy or the Portico ; others would have men- 
tioned the Mysteries of Isis, Eleusis or Mithra; a certain number 
would have suggested the philosophical schools of Rome and Alex- 
andria ; and the most daring spirits would have perhaps alluded to 
the Dualism of Persia or the Buddhism of India. No one, however, 
would have fixed upon a miserable handful of Jewish innovators, 
disowned by their fellow-countrymen ; or even, somewhat later, would 
have turned to those alleged Atheists who were beginning to attract 
the attention of the police by their mysterious meetings in the sub- 
terranean vaults of the imperial town. 

With all deference to human pride, be it said, everything in nature 
is of humble origin, and no one can say to-day whether the uncon- 



324 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 

scious mission of the publicans and fishermen who grouped themselves 
around a sweet and mystic idealist on the shores of Lake Tiberias 
eighteen centuries ago, will not be renewed to-morrow in our midst 
by some band of Spiritualists holding their seances in a recess of the 
Rocky Mountains ; by some gathering of enthusiasts discussing 
Socialism in a back parlour in London ; or by some confraternity of 
ascetics meditating, like the Essenes of old, on the miseries of the 
world in a jungle of Hindustan. Perhaps their only need would be 
to find another Paul on the road to Damascus, in order to enter upon 
the ways of the age under his direction. 

Powerless as we are to predict the name or even the form of the 
religion of the future, can we not at least conceive of the needs it 
must satisfy and the tendencies to which it will have to adapt itself? 
As early as the first century of our era, an impartial observer could 
have predicted with certainty that the approaching system of religion 
would have to manifest the sentiments of humanity, fraternity and 
universal charity ; that it would have to preach gentleness, humility 
and continence, with a scorn for riches and pleasure ; that it would 
have to emphasize the promises of a future life as a recompense for 
the ills and injustices of the present ; and, lastly, that it would have 
to re-act against the old anthropomorphic theogonies, by presenting for 
the adoration of men a God who should be Spirit, Purity and Love. 

To-day those aspects of the Divine which seem to specially attract 
u§ are Science, Law, Harmony, and consequently Justice : The faith 
of the future will have to take note of the movement which has pre- 
vailed in the realm of science ; it will have to adapt its theology to 
the ideas of immanence, continuity and uniformity in the order of the 
universe. 

But a religion is not merely the dramatized reproduction of a 
cosmical system. From the very fact that it is a reflex of the 
ideal, it also represents a reaction against the moral imperfection of 
the environment in which it exists. 

Thus Christianity has looked upon matter with an excess of scorn : 
the coming faith will have to rehabilitate the Beautiful, sanction all 
rational pleasures and re-establish the communion of man with nature. 

Our metaphysical speculations have long turned the attention of 
the highest and most generous minds from the consideration of social 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. . 325 

problems : the new faith will have to relegate the contemplation of 
super-sensible things to the second rank, in order to concentrate the 
chief activity of society upon the amelioration of the present world. 

Our positive sciences tend more and more to the crushing of the 
feeble by the strong in the struggle for existence : the faith of the 
future will have to react against this apotheosis of force and to establish 
on a religious foundation the rights of the individual. 

Our economic science has not answered to the hopes that our 
fathers for a while cherished : the future faith will not only have to 
present us with its solution of the problem of evil, but it must likewise 
provide us with a remedy, so that more justice may be brought into 
the relations of men. 

If in developing these indispensable elements of a progressive and 
harmonious culture, this faith succeeds in retaining the principles of 
sincerity, spirituality, and fidelity to duty, together with the devotedness 
and enthusiasm which have constituted the glory and led to the success 
of its predecessor, why need we concern ourselves about the name 
and the symbol under which it may be manifested in order to secure 
the peace of the human soul and the regeneration of the world ! 



INDEX 



INDEX. 



Abbot, F. E. , his propositions at Syra- 
cuse, 1 86. His editorship of The Index ^ 
187. His secession from Unitarianism, 
194. His pamphlet, 212. His sermons, 
220. His idea of God, 221. 

Academy of Concord, Description of, 
210. Its Hegelianism, 213. 

Acontius, J., his list of doctrines, 18. 
His synthetic method, 24. 

Adams, President, his reference to the 
extension of Unitarianism, 160. 

Adams, Rev. W., his religious meetings 
in -Calcutta, 233. His adoption of 
Liberal Christianity, 303. 

Adesh, a theory of inspiration, 261. 
Keshub Chunder Sen's use of it, 269. 
A doctrine of the New Dispensation, 
285, 286. 

Adi Somaj, its opposition to the Hindu 
Marriage Act, 249. Chunder Sen's 
secession from it, 261. The faith of, 
284. Its belief in the infallibility of 
the Vedas, 295, Its agreement with 
the other Somajes, 304. 

Adler, Felix, his presidency of the Free 
Religious Association, &c. , 191-195. 
Reference to his opinions, 205. The 
beliefs of his followers, 210. His 
views of morality, 216. His belief 
in the Absolute, 221. 

Advaita, the doctrine that the world ex- 
ists in God, 227. 

Adventists, believers in the second com- 
ing of Christ, 77. One of the Ameri- 
can sects, 205 (note). 

Affirmation Bill, Mr. Gladstone's, 34. 

Agnostics and Agnosticism, a negative 
school, 4. Its development from Uni- 
tarianism, 6. The origin of the word, 
47. Their presence in Parliament, 73. 
Their estimate of science, 145. Its 
relation to Spiritualism, 201. 

Ahmed Khan, his judicial position at 

Benares, 301. 
Akbar, The syncretism of, 231. His 
comprehensive aims, 288. 



Akhai Kumar Datta, his editorship of 
a Hindu journal, 238. 

Alcott, A. B., his connection with the 
Transcendental Club, 174. His special 
work, &c., 180, 181. His neo-Pytha- 
gorean views, 210. 

Alexander the Great, The victories of, 
41. 

Alexander the Paphlagonian, The adhe- 
rents of, 321. 

Alexander Severus, The opinion of, in 
relation to universal religion, 288. 
Paganism in his time, 320. 

Alexandria, The school of, and its doc- 
trine of pure spirit, &c., 321-323. 

Allah, The edifices devoted to the wor- 
ship of, 226, A personal God, 233. 

Alliance, Evangelical, its growing liber- 
ality, 80. 

Anabaptists, The persecution of, in the 
sixteenth century, 19, Their oppo- 
sition to ecclesiastical functions, 21. 
Their origin, 82. Their exclusion 
from New England, 157. 

Anjumans, semi-religious societies of In- 
dia, 297. Their development, 301. 

Antinomians, their exclusion from New 
England, 157. 

Apollonius of Thyana, The followers of, 
321. 

Arati, The celebration of, 287. 

Arians, the progress of their ideas, 19. 
When first known in England, 82. 
Their views of Christ, 85. The Hindu 
form of the doctrine, 274. 

Aristotle, The influence of, 52. Dedi- 
cation of a month to him by Comte, 
132. His large views of religion, 288. 
The school of, 321. 

Army, Salvation, The practices of, 5. 
Its band, 15. Its various divisions, 
&c. , 58, 59. Its adherents drawn from 
the lowest classes, 75. Its extrava- 
gances, 320. 



330 



INDEX. 



Arminianism and Arminians, The doc- 
trines of, 19, Relation to Unitarian- 
ism,93. Antagonism to Predestination, 
160. Doctrines of, held by the Camp- 
bellites, 205. 

Antonines, the intellectual condition of 
their age, 318. 

Armstrong, Rev. R. A. , The sermon of, 
89. 

Arnold, Dr., The influence of, 64. His 
views of Sacred History, 65. 

Arnold, Matthew, his definition of God, 
9, 50. His views of the functions of a 
Church, 69. What he sees in the 
Unknowable, 220. His relation to 
the new school of thought, 317. 

Articles, The Thirty-nine, when formed, 
16. The doctrines of, 66, 6*]. How 
accepted by Chillingworth, 71. The 
probable disappearance of, 72. 

Arya Somajes, their belief in Vedaic in- 
fallibility, &c., 294, 295. 

Aryans, the two branches of family, 7. 
Conception of neo-Platonic Word, 
169. Races of India, 227. Their 
genius, 236. Their ancient sacrifices, 
275. Their migrations, 303. 

Assises, Francis of, his place in the 
Comtist ritual, 135. 

Association of Coiigregational Ministers 
at Brooklyn, their resolution, 207. 

Atheists, their place in Mr. Gladstone's 
classification, 4. Excluded from Par- 
liament, 33, 73. Relation to Herbert 
Spencer's doctrine, 43. Their doc- 
trines in the last century, 84. The 
profession of, a crime, 159. Relation 
to Spiritualism, 201. The pessimistic, 
in India, 236, Mysticism of, in In- 
dia, 299. The ancient systems of, 307. 

Atmiya Sabha, a religious society formed 
by Ram Mohun Roy, 233. 



Bacon, Lord, establishes the experi- 
mental method, 23. 

Baltimore, Lord, founded Maryland, 159 
(note). 

Bancroft, his History of the United States, 
1 56 (note). His relation to Transcend- 
entalism, 180. 



Baptists, the sections and numbers of, 
58, 59. Their position and churches, 
75- Gradual change of old congrega- 
tions, 93. Their relative importance 
in America, 203. 

Barth, A., quoted from, 283, 297, 298 
(notes). 

Bartol, C. A., his Transcendentalism, 

174. 

Beecher, Rev. H. Ward, his salary, 202 
(note). His liberal teaching, 205. His 
popularity, 206 (note). Estimate of his 
heresy, 207. His speech at the banquet 
given to Herbert Spencer, 218. 

Beesley, Professor, a champion of Comt- 
ism, 136. His views of the future of 
society, 137. 

Bellows, Rev. Dr., his desire for union, 
185. 

Berkeley, Bishop, his work of emancipa- 
tion, 22. 

Bernard, Claude, the place of his teach- 
ings, 214. 

Besant, Mrs., her connection with The 
Freethinker, 32 (note). 

Bhagavad Gita, The poem of, 229. The 
philosophy of, 309 (note). 

Bhakti, The doctrine of, 229. The school 
of, 247. 

Bharat Assam, a boarding-house founded 
by Chunder Sen, 251. 

Bharatbharsia Somaj, the name for the 
Somaj of India, 244. The Secretary 
of, 245. Its Church, 247. Its orga- 
nization and minister, 248, 250. The 
congregations affiliated to it, 254 . The 
unity of the, 255. The progress of the, 
&c., 261-292. 

Bhils, The spirit of reform among the, 
298. 

Biddle, John, his heretical views, 82. 
His death, 83. His idea of Christ, 

85- 

Bisbee, Mrs. Clara, her religious work, 
188. 

Black, Dr. Patrick, one of Mr. Voysey's 
Committee,. 112 (note). 

Blavatsky, Madame, her connection with 
the Theosophical Society, 296. 

Blount, his teaching, 24. 

Blunt, Mr. W. S., Prediction of, respect- 
ing Mussulman power, 302. 



INDEX. 



331 



BoHngbroke, Lord, The natural Mono- 
theism of, 24. 

Booth, "General," his statement, 75 
(note). His recruits, 321. 

Bruno, The religious susceptibilities of, 
143 (note). 

Buddhism and Buddha, his relation to 
Moses, &c., 185, 187. Mr. Potter's 
reference to, 191. Rise of, 227. In- 
carnation of, 228. The difficulties of, 
229. The adherents of, 232. The 
social insurrection of, 243. The sects 
of, 250 (note). Numbers in India, 
3CX). Existence of, in the time of 
Christ, 323. 

Bowring, Sir J. , his connection with Mr. 
Voysey, 105, 112. 

Bradlaugh, his statement about the 
Freethinker, 32. His exclusion from 
Parliament, 34, 97. Editor of the 
National Reformer, 148, 

Brahm or Brahma, The sleeping states 
of, 41. The neuter of the name, 234, 

Brahma-Dharma, means, "the rule of 
Theism," 238, 239. The saving truths 
of, 245. The eclecticism of, 257-271. 
Its claims, 275. 

Brahmans, their privileges, 227. Their 
adoption of Buddha, &c,, 228, 229. 
Ram Mohun Roy's reference to, 232. 
Their position in the Brahmo Somaj, 
234. The tradition of the, 243, Their 
opposition to reform, 249-253. The 
societies of the, 297. Their sacred 
books, 309. 

Brahmoism and Brahmoists, The different 
schools of, 2. Sympathy for among 
the Transcendentalists, 202. Their 
worship, 226. Their numbers, 235. 
The constitution of, &c., 238 (note), 
239. Their divisions, &c., 244-294. 
The utterances of, &c., 303-311. 

Brahmo Somaj, its origin, 234. Loses 
its leader, 235. The new comers to, 
236. Breaks with the tradition of 
Hinduism, 238, 239. Social reforms 
of the, 241-255. The anniversary of 
the, 259. Its danger, 263. The crisis, 
265, 266. 

Brahmo Somaj, of Southern India, its 
devotional readings, 293. 



Bralmio Public Opinion, the principal 
organ of Brahmo movement, 292, Its 
reference to the New Dispensation, 
306. Its views of religious culture, 
308. 

Brahmostab, a Brahmoist festival, 246. 
Conference at time of the, 253. 

Bridges, Dr., his connection with Comt- 
ism, 133. 

Bright, John, The Parliamentary strug- 
gles of, 120. 

British and Foreign Unitarian Associa- 
tion, The Scotch correspondent of, 78. 
The annual sermon of, 94 (note). 
When founded, 96. Reprints life of 
Ezra Stiles Gannett, 161 (note). An- 
nual meeting of, and Dr. Putnam's 
address, 220. 

British Secular Union, its formation, 
148, 149. 

Brooke, Stopford, his change to Unita- 
ianism, 93, 94. 

Brownson, Orestes, The religious changes 
of, 174. 

Biichner, his Materialism, &c., 219. 

Butler, Bishop, supported a liberal the- 
ology, 25. 

Byom, Sar, its philosophic Nihilism, 299. 



Calvin, Calvinism, reference to by John 
Hales, 19. The central doctrine of, 
28. Its Puritan baldness, 62. Re- 
habilitated by Professor Drummond, 
67 (note). Held by the Baptists, 75. 
Insists on the humanity o^ Jesus, 85. 
God of, 108. The principles of, in the 
United States, &c., 155-165. Is los- 
ing its dogmatic authority, 181. Im- 
possible to be reconciled with evolution, 
218 (note). 

Campbellites or Disciples, The liberal 
movement of, 205. 

Carlyle, the influence of his writings, 27. 
Teaches German Idealism, 30, 31, 
163. Taine's reference to, 36. His 
saying about Dr. Newman, 63. Re- 
ligious susceptibilities of, 143 (note). 
Influence in India, 257. 

Carpenter, Dr., his British Association 
address, 49. His relation to the new 
theology', 317. 



332 



INDEX. 



Carvakas, The Materialistic philosophy 
of, 299. 

Castelar, his belief in religious recon- 
struction, 3. 

Chambers, his Vestiges of Creation, 37. 

Calas, pro-totypes of, in New England, 

158. 

Catholicism, the desire to retain it in 
English Ritual, 16. Number of ad- 
herents, 59. No halting place between 
it and irreligion, 63. Persecution in 
New England, 157. The power of, 
195. Relative importance of in United 
States, 203. Seeks to enlarge its in- 
fluence, 207. Mention of by Chunder 
Sen, 277. 

Chadwick, J. W., his definition of Chris- 
tianity, 195. Value of his lectures, 
220. His position, 317. 

Chaitanya, his efforts to reform Hindu- 
ism, 229. The followers of, 247. 
Brahmoist estimate of, 257. Invoked 
in imagination, 280. Formerly reviled, 
285. 

Channing, Dr., The words of, 20. His 
influence in the Unitarian Church, 86. 
His estimate of dogma, 95. Ezra 
Stiles Gannett, a disciple of, 161 (note). 
His position and work, 162-164. The 
sermon of, at Baltimore, 174. His 
power as a writer, 303. 

Channing, Rev. W. H., the Transcen- 
dentalism of, 174. His lectures, 211. 
His fidelity to the Transcendental 
school, 213. 

Charles the First, The fall of, 17. 

Cherbury, Lord Herbert of, the father of 
English Deism, 24, 25, ■ 

Chib Chunder Seb, the .contemporary of 
Ram Mohun Roy, 292. 

Child, Lydia, her Transcendentalism, 
213. 

Chillingworth, a founder of the Latitu- 
dinary party, 19, 20. His view of 
clerical subscription, 71. 

Christ, The traditional, 26. Redemp- 
tion by the blood of, 61. The super- 
natural, 74. The Divinity of, 83, 85, 
302. The miracles of, 84. Theistic 
view of, 88-90. Mr. Conway's esti- 
mate of, 126. Name of, omitted by 
Comte, 132. The pre-existence of, 



168. The nature of, 174. The moral 
teaching of, 185. The disciples of, 
and free inquiry, 186. Relation of 
teaching to the doctrine of evolution, 
217. Accepted by the Vishnuites as 
the last incarnation of their god, 228. 
Regarded as a reformer, 258. Chunder 
Sen's opinion of, 273, 274, 277. How 
honoured, 285. Preached as the Divine 
Word, 322. 

Christians, The, a Protestant sect, 74, 
161. 

Christians of the New Connection, 205. 

Celsus, his attacks on religion, 178. 

Christadelphians, a sect who deny the 
Trinity and the immortality of the 
soul, 77, Referred to by Mr. Spears, 
205 (note). 

Chubb, one of the Deists, 24. 

Church, Anglican, its signs of progress, 
6. Attitude towards Rationalism, 21. 
Coleridge takes orders in the, 26. 
Subject to the state, 31, 32. The oath 
of adherence to, 34. Description of, 
59-74. Secessions from, to Unitarian- 
ism, 83, 84. Mr. Voysey's expulsion 
from, 108. The persecutions of, 157. 

Church for Foreigners, founded by Cran- 
mer, 18. 

Church of Scotland, the baldness of, 62. 
The Free Kirk secession from, 76 
(note). Address by a minister of, 79. 

Church, Greek (in London), its symbol- 
ism, 14. 

Church, Episcopal (in Ireland), its sup- 
pression of the Athanasian Creed, 72. 
Its resources, 74. 

Church, Episcopal (in the United States), 
its rejection of the Athanasian Creed, 
72. Its adoption by the higher classes, 

195. 

Church, Reformed Episcopal, its exten- 
sion in England, 61. The schism of 
in America, 205. 

Cicero, the Deism of, 319. 

Clarke, James Freeman, his acceptance 
of German Idealism, 174. 

Cleanthes, the religious aims of, 288. 

Cobbe, Miss F. P., her representative 
position as a Theist, 30, 31. Her 
opinion of the Reformed Jews, 118, 
119. 



INDEX. 



333 



Cobden, The Parliamentary struggles of, 
1 20. 

Colenzo, Bishop, his acquittal by the 
Privy Council, 64, 71. His sincerity, 
64. His'conversion to liberal opinions, 
303. 

Coleridge, The early career of, 26, 27. 
His Transcendental teaching, 30, 31. 
The doctrine of the Trinity re-habili- 
tated by, 63. His liberal influence in 
Anglicanism, 86. Influence of in the 
United States, 168. Influence of, in 
India, 257. 

Coleridge, Lord, his reference to Mr. 
Bradlaugh's trial, 32. 

Collet, Miss S. D., the historian of Brah- 
moism, 226. Her remembrance of 
Ram Mohun Roy, 234. Her estimate 
of Theism, 242. Her reference to 
Hindu hymns, 247. The Year Book 
of, 251. Her description of the activi- 
ties of a Somaj, 254. Thinks that fer- 
vour saved Brahmoism, &c., 261, 262. 
Opposes Keshub, 281. Believes that 
the old divisions are being healed, 294 
(note). Article re-produced by, 305 
(note). 

Collins, a member of the Deistical school, 
24. 

Comtism, Comte, his opinion of the 
power of passion, 10. His philosophy, 
39. The Worship of Humanity es- 
tablished by, 129-145. Marriage cere- 
mony of, 151. Relation to Religion 
of Ethics, 194. M. Littre and the 
doctrines of, 210. The aims of, 288. 
Its chances of success in India, 298. 
Its relation to the Philosophy of Evo- 
lution, 323. 

Condillac, The Sensationalism of, 36. 

Congregationalists, The, their numbers, 
59, The historical descendants of the 
old Independents, 53. Constitution of 
their churches, 158. Their relative 
importance in America, 203 (note). 
Their progress represented by Henry 
Ward Beecher, 218. Attitude of the 
advanced to the old dogmas^ 315. 

Confucius, The enlightened views of, 
288. 



Congreve, Dr., his adoption of Comte's 
religious system, 133. The liturgy of, 
I34> 135- Rejects the authority of 
M. Lafitte, 136. 

Constant, Benjamin, his works read in 
America, 168. 

Conway, Moncure D., his opinion of the 
Ritualists, 62 (note). His contribution 
to the Index, 65 (note). His chapel 
licenced for marriages, 115. His theo- 
logical opinions and position, 119- 
128. The practical teaching of, 146. 
Form of worship in the congregation 
of, 314, 322. The free congregation 
of, 317. 

Clair, Rev. G. St., The transition state 
of, 93- 

Cooper, John, The Unitarian teaching 
of, '^Z- 

Copernicus, The cosmogony of, 28. 

Coquerel, Athanase, his Free Christian 
sympathies, 95, 

Corrano, Antoine, his rejection of the 
Trinity, 19. 

Cosmas, The curious views of, 28. 

Cosmism, The Divinity of, 3. The des- 
cription of, 205-221. 

Courtauld, Samuel, his connection with 
Mr. Voysey, 112. 

Cowie, T. H., his decision as Attorney- 
General of India, 248. 

Cranmer, Archbishop, invites, scholars to 
England, 18. 

Crompton, H., his championship of 
Comtism, 136. 

Cromwell, his treatment of Biddle, 83. 

Couch-Behar, The Maharajah of, marries 
Chunder Sen's daughter, 264, 265. 
The personal merits of, 286. 

Curteis, Rev. Canon, The Boyle lectures 
of, 70 (note). His part in the Spencer- 
Harrison controversy, 143 (note). 

Cousin, The writings of, in America, 
168. 



Dalton, The study of, in Boston, 214. 
Darmesteter, J., his translation of Max 
Miiller's lectures, 310 (note). 



334 



INDEX. 



Darwin, The hypothesis of, 37, 38, 40. 
His action against the persecution of 
the Jews, 80 (note). His sympathy 
with Mr, Voysey, 112. His new views 
of religion, 317. 

Darwin, Erasmus, a member of the Voy- 
sey Committee, 112. 

Dawson, Mr. George, The transition 
stage of, 93. 

Davies, Maurice, his description of heter- 
odox congregations, 67, 320. 

Dayananda Sarasvati Sivami, The mis- 
sionary labours of, 295. 

Dean, Rev. Peter, his confession of faith, 
&c., 88, 92. 

Debendra Nath Tagore, his personifica- 
tion of the Brahmo movement, 231. 
The tendencies of, 236, 237. Throws 
overboard infallibility of Scriptures, 
238. Compared with Keshub, 241. 
His preaching by example, 243, 244. 
Visits Chunder Sen, 282. His con- 
nection with the Adi Soma], 292, 293, 

295. 

Deism, Deists, of the i8th century, origi- 
nated with Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 
24, 25. The writings of, largely sold, 
84. 

Descartes, The disciples of, 28. A month 
dedicated to, by Comte, 132. 

Dharma Sabhas, The object of, 297. 

Dial^ The^ the organ of the Transcend- 
entalists, 174. 

Dissenters, The persecutions of, 22. 
Helped to overthrow the Stuarts, 32. 
Formerly excluded from Parliament, 
34. The Christian Standard^ an or- 
gan of the, 67. Their legislation for 
the Church, 73. The denominations 
of, 77. The trust deeds of, 80. The 
theological progress of, 317. 

Dix, Rev. William, the large salary of, 
at New York, 202 (note). 

Dixon, Mr. W. Hepworth, his estimate 
of the Spiritualists, 200, 320 

DollJnger, Dr., The position of, in the 
Old Catholic party, 62 (note). 

Dourga Das Ray, The ethical views of, 
286. 

Drummond, Professor, The theological 
views of, 67, 68 (note). 



Dwarka Nath Mitter, his championship 

of Comtism, 298. 
Dwarka Nath Tagore, the father of Deb- 
endra Nath Tagore, 235. 
Dordrecht, The Council of, 19. 



Edward VI., The reign of, 18. His hos- 
pitality to the Italian and Spanish 
Protestants, 82. 

Elizabeth, Queen, The Calvinists in the 
reign of, 21. Puritan movement in 
the reign of, 155. 

Eliot, George, her estimate of James 
Thomson, 147 (note). 

Emerson, The religious susceptibilities of, 
143 (note). His comparison of super- 
stition and principle, 149 (note). His 
opinions and influence as the ** Prince 
of Transcendentalists," 170-173, 315. 
Both a philosopher and poet,i8o. His 
Christianity contested, 185. His con- 
nection with the Free Religious Asso- 
ciation, 202. Heard in the Academy 
of Concord, 211. His prediction of a 
religious interregnum, 212. His defi- 
nition of God, 221. 

Emory, Professor, one of the Transcend- 
entalists, 211. 

Encampment of Christian philosophy, 
The, at Greenwood, 211. 

Epicurus, The doctrines of, 227. The 
Materialism of, 319. The philoso- 
phical school of, 321. 



Falkland, Lord, his house like a univer- 
sity, 19. 
Fairbairn, Professor, The opinions of, 

318- 
Feuerbach, his Atheism, 36. His attacks 

upon religion, 178. 
Fichte, The subjective Idealism of, 167, 

168. His definition of religion, 214, 

215. 
Firmin, Thomas, his love of Socinian 

ideas, 83. 
Fiske, Professor, develops the synthesis 

of evolution, 214. His conception of 

God, 221. 
Foote, his imprisonment, 32 (note). 



INDEX. 



335 



Fox, W. J., the minister of South Place 
Chapel, 1 20. His hymns, 121. Suc- 
ceded by Mr. Conway, 127. 

Francis, Professor, a Transcendentalist, 
174. 

Free Religious Association, formed by 
Mr. Abbot, 186. The object of, 187. 
Its propagandism, 188. Comparison 
with Society for Ethical Culture, 191 ; 
with Unitarianism, 194, 195. Its re- 
port, 197. Its relation to Spiritualism, 
201. Its Committee, 202. Its work, 
influence, &c., 21 1-2 19. 

Free Christian, the movement, 194, 195. 

Free Church of England, numbers forty 
congregations, 61. 

Free Church of Scotland, The formation 
of, 75. 

Free Religious Congregations at Provi- 
dence, 189; at Florence, 215 (note); 
at New Bedford, 214; at Dorchester, 
188. 

Freie-Religiose Gemeinde, formed by the 
Germans, 200. 

Frey, W., his attempt to reconcile the 
doctrines of Comte and Spencer, 140- 
146, 323. His non-dogmatic Comtism, 
210. 

Frothingham, O. B,, the historian of 
Transcendentalism, 169. President of 
the Free Religious Association, 187. 
His estimate of the Spiritualists, 200. 
His speech, 219. Value of his lectures, 
220, His views of the constructive 
period, 318. 

Froude, Mr., his part in the Tractarian 
movement, 62. 

Fuller, Margaret, carries Transcendent- 
alism into criticism, &c., 180, 212. 

Furness, W. H., a Transcendentalist, 
174. 



Gannett, Ezra Stiles, his opinion of Dr. 
Ware, 161. The biography of, 207. 

Gannett, W. C, his father's biographer, 
161 (note). His opinion of Channing's 
Baltimore sermon, 162, 174. On the 
Committee of Free Religious Associa- 
tion, 202. His views of science and 
religion, 219-221. 



Garcin de Tassy, The reference of, to 
Ram Mohun Roy, 231 (note), 234, 
235 (note). Reference to his work 
on Hindustan, 296, 302 (notes). His 
views of missionary work in India, 
303. His account of the "perversions" 
from Christianity 308 (note). 

Garfield, Mr., the candidature of, 206. 

Gibbon, the last of the Deists, 25. 

Guizot, his estimate of Mr. Fox's elo- 
quence, 120, 

Gladstone, The Right Hon. W. E., his 
description of the various schools of 
religious thought, 4. His Affirmation 
Bill, 34. His estimate of the religious 
value of Mr. Spencer's philosophy, 45. 

Glanvil, one of the Latitudinarian party, 
22. 

Glassites, The, their holy kiss, 77. 

Goethe, The scientific hypothesis of, 37. 
The religious susceptibilities of, 143. 

Gotheil, Dr., a liberal rabbi, 195. 

Gouri, a Hindu divinity of marriage, 267. 

Graham, W. , his remarkable work, 50. 
Sees in the Unknowable an ordaining 
Power, 220. The broad views of, 317. 

Grandier, Urbain, a prototype of New 
England persecution, 158. 

Guebres, Islamism has borrowed from 
the, 231. 



Haeckel, The scientific faith of, 143 
(note). The doctrine of, 227, 307. 

Hales, John, brought liberal opinions to 
England, 19. 

Hall, Rev. E. P.,his translation of Bonet- 
Maury's work, 19. 

Hall, Rev. John, The salary of, 202 
(note). 

Hamilton, Sir W,, his doctrine of the 
Unknowable, 40. 

Hari, a Hindu divinity of marriage, 267. 
The god who blots out sin, 275, 276. 

Harris, Prof., edits \h^ Journal of Specu- 
lative Philosophy^ 211. 

Harrison, Frederic, President of the 
London Positivist Society, 136, 137. 
His views of the evolutionary philo- 
sophy, 138. Controversy with Herbert 
Spencer, 139-143 (note). 



v336 



INDEX. 



Hartley, his influence on Priestley, 85. 

Harte, Bret, The stories of, 120. 

Hartmann, Von, his definition of re- 
ligion, 10. His prediction as to re- 
ligion in the future, 310, 311. 

Hawthorne, his power of psychological 
analysis, i8i. 

Hegel, Hegelianism, The doctrine of, 
36. Expounded at Concord, 211, 213. 

Henry the Eighth, progress of thought 
since his reign, 5. The ideas of his 
time, 17. The reform effected by, 

313- 
Hebrews, The Monotheism of, 29. 

Herder, The works of, studied in America, 
168. 

Hepworth, Rev. G., his religious conser- 
vatism, 194. 

Higginson, Colonel Wentworth,his Tran- 
scendentalism, 174. Preaches in Mr. 
Conway's chapel, 122. His connec- 
tion with the Free Religious Associa- 
tion, 202. His fidelity to old beliefs, 

213. 

Hinkley, Rev. F. A., examined as to the 
nature of "Free Religion," 189. His 
view of God, 215 (note). 

Hinduism and Hindus, The mysticism of, 
7, 259. The monuments of, 173. The 
faith of, 191. The idols of, 226. The 
intellectual character and vitality of, 
227, 228. The, temples of, sacked, 
230. The superstitions of, 231. The 
practices of, 243, 248. Marriage 
among the, &c., 249-281. Its possible 
absorption of Brahmoism, 291. The 
Rationalism of, 294. The movement 
of thought among, 297. The religious 
character of, 299. Sects of, «&:c., 300- 
303. The lofty sentiments of, &c., 
305-309. The emancipated minds of, 
314. Relation to other faiths, 317. 

Hobbes, destroys foundations of religion, 
22. His theory of the Church, 31. 
The Materialism of, 36. The critic- 
isms of, 209. 

Holyoake, Austin, The death of, 148. 

Holyoake, G. J., aids in founding Na- 
tional Secular Society, 148. His 
preaching in Unitarian pulpits, 150, 
195. 



Holmes, Oliver Wendell, a writer and 
humorist, 180. 

Homa, the sacrifice of fire, 266. Chun- 
der Sen's observance of, 275. 

Hooker, his work of emancipation, 22. 

Hopps, Rev. J. P. , The special services- 
of, loi (note). 

Howe, Mrs., her lectures at Concord, 
211. 

Hugo, Victor, a vice-president of the 
British Secular Union, 150. 

Humanitarians, The, a description of, 
114-I17. 

Hume, his universal scepticism, 25, 36^ 
317. The life of, 51. The philo- 
sophic nihilism of, 299. 

Huxley, his lay sermons, 46. His ar- 
ticle on Evolution, 51. His description 
of Positivism, 131. The scientific faith 
of, 143 (note). His works read in 
Boston, 214. 



Idealism, German, taught by Coleridge, 
26. Its effect in England, 30. 64. 
Produces the Transcendental school, 
170. See Transcendentalism. 

Independents, their demand for religious 
freedom, 21. Their support of Crom- 
well in the amnesty to Biddle, 83, 
See Congregationalists. 

Independent Religious Reformers, their 
lifeless Theistic services, 114. 

Indian Reform Association, founded by 
Chunder Sen, 250. 

Ingersoll, Colonel R., his extreme utter- 
ances, 204. 

Incarnation, The dogma of, 27. 

Irvingites, The, their symbolism, 14, 
Their churches, 77. 

Islamism. See Mohammedanism. 



Jackson, Dr., succeeded by Dr. Temple, 

65. 
Jacobi, The doctrine of, 167. His works 

read in Boston, 168. 
Jacquemont, Victor, his description of 

the English, 226. 
Jaina, The, religion, 250. 
James the First, Persecutions in the reign 

of, 156. 



INDEX. 



337 



Jamblicus, a thinker in antiquity, 288. 
Jatkarma, a form of thanksgiving, 245. 
John, St., the Evangelist, his Logos 

doctrine, 322. 
Jevons, his relation to the nevi^er thought, 

317. 

Johnson, Samuel, the individualism of, 
174. His church at Lynn, Mass., 

213, 315- 
Jones, Dr., his lectures at Concord, 211. 

Jones, Rev. Jenkins L., edits Unity, 
197. 

JoufFroy, The works of, in America, 168. 

Jourgi, a reformer among the Bhils, 298. 

Jowett, Prof., his connection with Essays 
and Reviews, 65. 

Jews, Reformed or Progressive, the doc- 
trine of, 1 17- 1 19. Their attitude to- 
ward the past, 199. The Theists 
among, 315. 

Judas Iscariot, Parker's reference to, 176. 

Jumpers, The eccentricities of, 14. 



Kabir, substitutes a spiritual faith for 
Vedas and Koran, 230. The enlighten- 
ment of, 288. 

Kant, The theory of, 27, Theistic school 
traceable to, 31. His relation to the 
doctrine of evolution, 36. The reli- 
gious feelings of, 143 (note). The 
school of, 165, 184. Combats nega- 
tive psychology, 167. His teaching 
the basis of Transcendentalism, 174, 
1 77 J 316. The postulates of, 192. 
The doctrine of, 285. 

Karvuna Chunder Sen, the sonof Keshub, 
283. 

Kaspary, Joachim, the leader of the 
Humanitarians, 1 1 5, 1 16. 

Keble, his connection with Dr. Pusey, 62. 

Keene, Mr. G. H., his article in The 
Calcutta Review, 295. 

Kegan Paul aids Free Christian move- 
ment, 95. 

Kemp, his connection with The Free- 
thinker^ 32. 

Kempis, Thomas a. The spiritual power 
of, 99 (note). In great favour with 
orthodox Comtists, 134 (note). 



Keshub Chunder Sen, his communica- 
tion with the Transcendentalists, 202, 
Personifies Brahmoism. 231. Changes 
Brahma-Dharma into a religion, 239. 
His family, 241 . His views of Theism, 
242. Dines with Debendra and loses 
caste, 243. A similar violation of caste 
and the secession of, 244. Is made 
Secretary of the Bharatbharsia Somaj, 
&c., 245-263. His daughter's mar- 
riage, &c., 264-269. His New Dis- 
pensation, &c., 273-289. The old 
congregation faithful to, 292. Changes 
occasioned by death of, 294 (note). 
His preaching in Unitarian churches, 
303. His relation to the doctrine of 
the hermetic chain, 322. 

Kingsley, Canon, The sincerity of, 68. 

Koran, Passages from, in the Sacred 
Anthology, 121. Kabir's treatment 
of, 230. The Monotheism of, 233. 
The religion of, 300, 301, 309. Sup- 
posed origin of, 302. 

Krishna, his worshippers, 229. Temple 
dedicated to, 231. The legend of, 309 
(note). 

Krishna Bihari Sen officiates at marriage 
of Keshub's daughter, 266. 

Kuenen, Professor, Banquet to, 65 (note). 
Represents school of modern Protest- 
antism in Holland, 91. 



Laboulaye, Ed., quoted from 159 (note). 
His opinion of American Democracy, 
160. 

Lafitte, P., accepted as leader by Comt- 
ists, 133. His authority rejected, 136. 

Labarre, a prototype of New England 
persecutions, 158. 

Lamarck, The hypothesis of, 37. 

Laplace, The generalizations of, 28. 

Laugel, M. Aug., his reference to Herbert 
Spencer, 45, 46, 138 (note). 

Laveleye, Emile de, his views of Ameri- 
can Democracy, 160. 

Lecky, W. S. H., The opinions of, 22, 49 
(note). His reference to the Ration- 
alists, 130. His reference to religious 
liberty, 84. 

Leibnitz, The doctrine of, 36. 

Leroux, Pierre, The system of, 115. 
Y 



338 



INDEX. 



Lewes, G. H., The writings of, in 
America, 214. 

Lindsey, Rev. Th., his leaving the Es- 
tablished Church, 84. 

Littre, The opinion of, 8. The Positive 
school of, 138, 210, 321. 

Locke, his explanation of mental phe- 
nomena, 23. The Sensational school 
of, 24-26, 29. Influenced by preju- 
dice, 85. Priestley a disciple of, 85. 
The theology of, 164. The philosophy 
of, 184, 185. 

Lollards, The old leaven of, 16. Attempts 
to connect Unitarianism with the, 82. 

Lily Cottage, The ashes of Chunder Sen 
deposited in, 283. 

Longfellow, his place in American litera- 
ture, 170, 181. 

Longfellow, Samuel, The hymns of, 174. 
His fidelity to old opinions, 213. 

Low, A., The profession of faith of, 185, 

Lucretius, the Materialism of, 319. 

Luther, The Reform inaugurated by, 16, 
313- 

Lyell, Sir Ch. , his service to science, 28. 
The funeral of, 65. His sympathy 
with Mr. Voysey, 105, 112. 

Lytton, his rule in India, 252 (note). 



MacDonald, Rev.,' The liberal opinions 

of, 78. • 
Madhava, an Indian reformer, 229. 
Maine, Sir H. Sumner, his bill relating 

to Hindu marriages, 248-250. His 

speech -at Calcutta, 306. 
Man, Singh, The Rajah, 231. 
Mansel, Dean, referred to by Mr. F. 

Harrison, 142 (note). 
Mariano, the higher thought of, 3. 
Martineau, Dr. James, a Unitarian, 3. 

Quoted from, 29, 30, 54. Compared 

with Dean Stanley, 66. His opinion 

of existing theological changes, 78. 

Reference to works of, 86, 87 (notes). 

His "Ten Services," 91, 105. Interest 

in "Free Christian" movement, 95. 

Channing's letter to, 170. A leader 

in the new theology, 317. 



Materialism, Materialists, a monistic sol- 
ution of the world, 52. Relation to 
Spiritualism, 201. Quarrel with re- 
ligion, 214. Remain Idealists in India, 
299. The old physiological, 317. The, 
of Epicurus, 319. 
Maximus, of Tyre, his Platonic philo- 
sophy, 1 1 . The enlightened opinions 
of, 288. 
May, Thomas Erskine, his history, 26, 

32 (notes). 
Medard, St., The contortions of, 14. 
Methodists, The, their numbers, 59. The 
origin of and condition, 74, 75. Mr. 
Conway's connection with, 119. Re- 
lative position in America, 203. Move- 
ment of thought among, 205. 
Miall, Rev. W., connected with " Free 

Christian" movement, 95. 
Middleton, The liberal theology of, 25. 
Mill, J. Stuart, The psychology of, 39, 
40. Positivists of the school of, 119, 
138. His modification of Posivitism, 
133. The school of, 321. 
Milton, The theological opinions of, 84. 
Missions, Christian, in India, their want 

of success, 302. 

Mohammed, Mohammedanism, the spirit 

of, 14. Mussulman inspiration from, 

144. Compared with Buddha, &c., 

185, 187, 257. An Asiatic faith, 191, 

251. Accepted Christ as a prophet, 

277. Chunder Sen and the name of, 

280. The position of in India, 300-305. 

Moses, Mr. Conway and name of, 126. 

Comte and name of, 132. Compared 

with Mohammed, &c., 185. Ram 

Mohun Roy's veneration for, 233. 

Chunder Sen and name of, 280. 

Moleschott, his words and influence, 219. 

Monotheism, The natural, among the 

Deists, 24. The introduction of among 

the Hebrews, 29. Among reformed 

Jews, 117. . The strict, of the first 

Evangelists, 169. A return to, 221. 

The rigid, of the Mohammedans, &c., 

230 et seq. Of the West, 309. The 

Semitic, 311. 

Montaigne, The statement of, 3. 

Montefiore, Claude, his article, 117 

(note). His opinions of reformed 

Judaism, 118. 



INDEX. 



339 



Montesquieu, his estimate of religion in 

England, 152. 
Moravian Brethren, their numbers, 77. 
Morrison, J. Cotter, The Comtism of, 

136. 

Mormons, The, the places of worship of, 

77. 
Morse, Rev. Dr., his charge against 

liberal ministers, 162. 
Mott, Lucretia, the Transcendentalism 

of, 202. 
Miiller, Prof. Max, his reference to Indian 

faiths, 228 (note), 310. His sympathy 

with Chunder Sen, 281. His opinion 

of the common basis of religions, 317. 
Mussulmans, The Deity of, 226. Claimed 

the body of Kabir, 230. The Indian, 

301. 



Namkaran, The choice of a name, 245. 

Nanak Shah, his efforts at religious re- 
form, 230. The services of, 257. 

National Secular Society, The Free- 
thinkers of, 298. 

Native Marriage Act, passed to satisfy 
the Brahmos, 250. Keshub's disregard 
of, 264. 

Nava, Bidhan (The New Dispensation), 
reference to, 238 (note). The syn- 
cretism of, 273-289. Relation. to the 
Sadharan Somajes, 293, 294. Descrip- 
tion of, by the Brahi7io Public Opinion, 
306. Chunder Mozoumdar's apology 
for, 311. Doctrine of hermetic chain 
in, 322. 

Neal, his history referred to, 17 (note). , 

Newman, Cardinal, one of the Trac- 
tarians, 62. Enters the Roman Church 
within ten years, 63. Opposes per- 
secution of the Jews, 80 (note). 

Newman, Prof. F. W., a representative 
of Theism, 30. Joins Unitarian As- 
sociation, 87. The career of in Syria, 
303- 

Newton, The generalization of, 28. The 
theological opinions of, 84.' The mind 
of, 178 (note). 

Newton, Rev. Heber, his admiration of 
Emerson, 172. The new views of, 
317. 



Northbrook, Lord, his estimate of Brah- 
moism, 252. 

Ochino, Bernard, The proscription of, 
18. 

Olcott, Col. H., his connection with the 
Theosophical Society, 296, 297 (note). 

Old Catholics, mentioned by Mr. Glad- 
stone, 4. 

Owen, Robert Dale, his connection with 
the Free Religious Association, 202. 



Paganism, ancient, The believers in, 4, 
48, 49. Mr. Savage's definition of, 
218. Its comprehensiveness in the 
time of Alexander Severus, 320. The 
place of, 323. 

Paine, Thomas, his influence in America, 
209. 

Paley, the liberalized theology of, 25. 
The teleological combination of, 39. 

Pantheism, Pantheists, The negative 
position of, 4. A form of, held by 
Servetus, 18. The Brahminic, 41. 
The hour of, struck, 48. Its philo- 
sophic conception, 52. Idealistic, held 
by advanced religious teachers, 88. 
Emerson's, 171. Hindu, 227-233. 
Chunder Sen's estimate of, 260, 274. 
Opinion of, by Sadharan Somaj, 305. 
The ancient, 311. 

Parker, Theodore, from John Robinson 
to, 160. His Transcendental opinions 
and teaching, 174-185. Church erected 
to memory of, 214. Chunder Sen, and 
280. The eloquent pen of, 303. His 
position in the Transcendental move- 
ment, 315. 

Parsees, the differences of, with Brah- 
mans, 249. But few in number, 300. 
The sacred books of, 309. 

Parris, George Van, The martyrdom of, 

19- 

Pasteur, a vice-president of the British 
Secular Union, 150 

Pattison, Mark, his description of the 
Positivist service, 135. 

Paul, St., compares the earth to a taber- 
nacle, 28. The writings of, 194. His 
bearing towards the Athenians, 113. 



340 



INDEX. 



Quoted from, by Mr. Conway, 121. 

Comte's use of name, 132. His view 

of Christ, 322. Another needed, 324. 
Pease, Mr., The election of, 34. 
Peculiar People, The, their notoriety, 77. 
Penn, William, his charter, 159. 
Philo, The Logos of, 322. 
Picton, J. Allanson, The opinions of, 97 

(note). 
Pierpont, John, his Transcendentalism, 

174. 

Pillon, M., his description of the hymn 
to Varuna, 237 (note). 

Plato, admired by the Transcendenta- 
lists, 174. The school of, 321. 

Playfair, his influence on the interpreta- 
tion of Genesis, 28. 

Plymouth Brethren, The, their exclusive 
claim, 77. 

Potter, W. J., is made secretary of the 
Free Religious Association, 187. His 
religious opinions, 190, 191 (note). 
Comparison of words with Mr. Bee- 
cher's, 205. The followers of, 210. 
His estimate of the future, &c., 213- 
215. The lectures of, 220. His defi- 
nition of God, 221. His Free Congre- 
gation, 317. 

Prakriti, the primordial substance of 
things, 307. 

Pramada Dasa Mittra, Prof., his defence 
of Vedantine philosophy, 299 (note). 

Prarthanas Somajes, their aim and posi- 
tion, 293, 305. 

Presbyterianism and Presbyterians, in 
Elizabeth's time, 21. Their numbers, 
59. The Calvinism of, 76, Progress 
among, 78, 205. Their part in the 
overthrow of Charles the First, 156. 
Relative position in America, 203. 
Resemblance to neo-Brahmos, 245. 
The advanced, 315. 

Pitakas, The literary treasures of, 309. 

Prescott, The Transcendentalism of, 181. 

Priestley, Dr., his views of Revelation, 
85. The sensational theology of, 185. 

Pritchard, Andrew, one of Mr. Voysey's 

committee, 112. 
Proclus, The great religious aims of, 288. 
Protab Chunder Mozoumdar, his mess- 
ages from the Transcendentalists, 202. 
His description of Theism, 241. Of 



the Brahmostabs, 246. Complains of 
Keshub's tendencies, 263. Explains 
the New Dispensation, 275, 287, 311. 
His claim, 294 (note). His preaching 
in England, 303. Conversation with 
Tyndall, 310. 

Puranas, the popular Bible of the Hindus, 
237- 

Puritans, The, their looking to the primi- 
tive Church, 85. In New England, 
155, 160. Mr. Potter's Church and 
the, 190. Influences unknown to, 
206. The, of Islamism, 301. 

Pusey, Dr., his name associated with 
Tractarian movement, 62. 

Putnam, Dr., the address of, 220. 

Pym, his view of Church and State, 17. 

Pythagoras, admired by Bronson Alcott, 
174. 



Quakers, or Friends, The, their opposi- 
tion to ecclesiasticism, 21. The per- 
secution of, 32. The affirmation of, 
34. Their numbers, 77. Their colon- 
ization of Pennsylvania, 155. Ex- 
cluded from New England, 177. The 
liberal position of, 187, 202, 315. 

Queensberry, Lord, the connection of, 
with British Secular Union, 150. 

Quinet, Edgar, his opinion of the Brah- 
mans, 237. 



Raj Narain Bose, his ability, &c., 293. 
President of the Adi Somaj, 304. His- 
work, 305 (note). 

Ram Mohun Roy, the founder of Brah- 
moism, 226. His descent, labours, 
and character, 231-235. Nature of 
his organization, 236. His family 
similar to Chunder Sen's, 241. The 
work of, &c., 291-293. His statement 
respecting Christianity, 303. 

Ramanda, the philosopher, 230. 

Raman uj a, a Hindu Reformer, 229. 

Ramsey, Mr., his connection with The 
Free-thinker, 32 (note). 

Rawlinson, Mr. G. F., his statistics of 
Catholicism, 63 (note). 

Rawson, Mr. L., the Free-thinkers' Re- 
port, 201 (note). 



INDEX. 



341 



Renan, Ernest, The constructive ten- 
dency of, 3. His lecture, 90 (note). 
The religiousness of, 143 (note). . A 
Vice-President of the British Secular 
Union, 150. 

Renouvier, The constructive tendency 
of, 3. 

Reville, Albert, An article by, 64 (note). 
His opinion of Calvin and the Divinity 
of Christ, 85. 

Reynolds, The vi'ork of, 69, 70 (note). 

Ripley, George, The Transcendentalism 
of, 174. His fortune spent, 181. The 
fidelity of, to old opinions, 213. 

Ripon, Lord, The rule of, in India, 252. 

Robespierre, The failure of, 25, 

Robinson, John, his address to the first 
emigrants, 156. The continuous de- 
velopment from, 160. 

Rosencranz, Professor, The death of, 2ii. 

Rothschild, Lionel de, his election an- 
nulled, 34. 

Rousseau developed Deism in France, 25. 



Sabellius, The opinions of, 18 (note). 

Sacchidananda, the Vedantine Trinity, 
279. 

Sadharan Somaj, A description of, 238 
(note). The secessions of, 269, 291. 
The constitution of 270. Takes up 
cause of true Brahmoism, 273. A 
critique of Keshub by the missionary of, 
284. Its congregations, 293. Agree- 
ment with the other Somaj es, 304. 

SafFord, Mary A., a ministress, 194. 

Salar Yung, his good influence, 302. 

Salter, W. , his work for the Society of 
Ethical Culture, 194. 

Sandemanians, see Glassites. 

Sankhya, The school, 307. 

Sargent. John J., connection with Free 
Religious Association, 202. 

Savage, Rev. M. J., his Unitarianism, 3. 
The broad views of, 195, 202. His 
desire to harmonize religion and evo- 
lution, 214-221, 317. 

Shelley, The rehgiousness of, 143 (note). 

Schelling, his theory of the Trinity, 64, 
His philosophical ideas, &c., 167, 168. 

Schiller, his estimate of scepticism, 150 
(note). 



Schliermacher, The works of, in America, 
168. His ideas of religion, 167. 

Secularists, Secularism, The negative 
position of, 4. The rudimentary wor- 
ship of, 6. The aims and character 
of, 147-152. Their opinions in India, 
298. 

Seekers, The, their anti-ecclesiasticism, 
21. 

Seeley, Professor J. , his work, "Natural 
Religion," 47. The stand-point of, 

49- 
Seneca, The enlightened aims of, 288. 
Schopenhauer, The opinions of, adopted, 

309 (note). 
Servetus, Michael, his heretical views, 

18, 19. Sent to the stake, 67 (note). 

His idea of Christ, 85. 
Shafites, a school of Islamism, 301. 
Shaftesbury, Lord, The natural Mono- 
theism of, 24. 
Shakers, The, see Jumpers. 
Shiites, a Mohammedan sect, 300, 301. 
Shakespeare, The works of, 41. Mr. 

Conway and the name of, 126. A 

Comtist month dedicated to, 132. 
Schradha, a Hindu funeral service, 245. 
Schunemann-Pott, his interest in Free 

Religion, 202. 
Sidgwick, Professor, The opinions of, 53. 
Sikhs, The, their origin, 231. Their pre- 
sent character, 300. 
Simon the Magician, The wonders 

wrought by, 321. 
Siva, the god personifying destructive 

agencies, 234. The trident of, 280. 
Sivanath Sastri, The New Dispensation 

described by, 270, 277, 305 (notes). 

His description of Keshub, 284. 
Slade, The wonders wrought by, 321. 
Smith, Joe, The badge of, 321. 
Society for Ethical Culture, formed by 

Mr. Adler, 191, 192, Its aims, 193. 

A branch of, at Chicago, 194. Its 

practical stand-point, 314. 
Socinianism, Biddle and the doctrines 

of, 82. Dangerous to preach, 84. 

Forms one extreme of Unitarianism, 

89. Readily followed Arminianism, 

160. 
Sofis of Persia, 288. Their Mystico- 

Pantheistic doctrine, 301. 



342 



INDEX. 



Sonnesheim, Rabbi S. W., connects Free 
Religion with Reformed Judaism, 200. 

Souni Sar, its philosophic Nihilism, 299. 

Southcote, Johanna, The believers in, 77, 

Spears, Rev. Robt., The Unitarian Mar- 
tyrology published by, 82. The origin 
of half the Unitarian Churches accord- 
ing to, 93. His estimate of the Ameri- 
can Churches, 202, 205, 

Spencer, Herbert, his conception of an 
omnipresent Power, 8", 50. Identifies 
"force" and "energy," 36 (note). The 
philosophical system of, 39-46. All our 
conceptions symbols, according to, 71, 
322. The writings of, 88. His belief 
in the kinship between man and the 
Unknowable, loi. Positivists hostile 
to the writings of, 138-145. His doc- 
trines developed by Professor Fiske and 
Mr. Savage, 214-220. His philosophy 
not materialistic, 307. Views of the 
evolutionists in harmony with, 317. 

Socrates, use of name by Mr. Conway, 
126. By Chunder Sen, 280. For- 
merly reviled by Christians, 285. 

Spiritualism and Spiritualists, their con- 
nection with the Free Religious As- 
sociation, 187. Their numbers, &c., 
200-202. The statement of a, 212. 

Spinoza, The religiousness of, 143 (note.) 

Stanley, Dean, his words at Sir C. 
Lyell's funeral, 6^. Opinions of, com- 
pared with Dr. Martineau's, 66. The 
sincerity of, 68. The liberality of, 79. 
His sympathy with Mr. Voysey, 112. 
His generous opinion of Chunder Sen, 
281. His reference to the reconcili- 
ation of science and revelation, 320. 

Stebbins, G. B,, his statement about 
Spiritualists, 201. 

Stephen, Fitzjames, introduces "Brahmo 
Marriage Act," 249, 250. 

Stewart, Balfour, his return to neo- 
Platonism, 50, 322. The large views 
of, 317- 

Stansfield, Judge, a supporter of Mr. 
Voysey, 112. 

Stephens, Sir James, his part in the 
Spencer-Harrison controversy, 143 
(note). 

Strauss, the naturalistic idealism of, 214. 



Suetonius, his allusion to the Jewish 
quarter in Rome, 323. 

Sufheld, Rev. R. R., his sermon : "Why 
I became a Unitarian," 99. 

Sully, Mr. James, his article on evolu- 
tion, 50-54. 

Sumner, Charles, The Transcendentalism 
of, 180. 

Sunnites, The, their allegiance to the 
Sultan, 300. Their views of inspira- 
tion, 301. 

Swedenborgians, their congregations, 79. 
Origin of the, 319. 



Tabernacle Ranters, Theeccentricity of, 14. 

Taine, M., his description of Deism in 
France, 25 (note). Traces present 
current of thought to Germany, 36. 

Tait, Prof. P. J., The.neo-Platonism of, 
50, 322. A representative of English 
science, 317. 

Tattva Bodhini Sabha, a Brahmoist as- 
sociation, 235, 238. 

Tayler, J. J., his work referred to, 17, 
21, 29, 30 (notes). Dr. Martineau's 
introduction to the work of, 54. 
Work referred to, 78, 82 (notes). 

Taylor, Rev. J., The advanced opinions 
of, 92. 

Taylor, Jeremy, his connection with the 
Latitudinarian party, 19, 20. 

Temple, Dr., a writer in Essays and Re^ 
views, 65. The sincerity of, 68. 

Temple, Sir Richard, the reference of, 
to Hindu sects, 294, 308. 

Test Act, The, its injustice to Dissenters, 

34. 
Theism, the eclectic of India, 6. The 
school of in England, 30, 87, 257, 
288, 316. Rejected by Spencer, 43, 
45. The principles of, and evolution, 
50. A vague form of, accepted, 55. 
Mr. Voysey's, 107, 117. Mr. Con- 
way's advance beyond, 120. The 
great axioms of, 169, 314. Mr. Adler 
accepts foundation of, 192. Protab 
Chunder Mozoumdar's description of, 
242. The Sadharan Somaj and, 270. 
Described by Raj Narain Bose, 304. 
The Transcendental, of Brahmoism, 
307. A personal faith, 315. 



INDEX. 



343 



Theophilanthropes, The, the compre- 
hensive aims of, 103. 

Theosophical Society of New York, The, 
its claims, 295. Of India, the pro- 
pogandism of, 297. 

Thomson, James, his description of 
Secularism, 147, 149 (note). 

Tiberius, the government of, 323. 

Tindal, The natural Monotheism of, 24. 

Tocqueville, The prediction of, 221. 

Transcendentalism, The phase of, passed 
through in America, 6. Name given 
by Americans, 165, 257. The des- 
cription of, 168-185. Represented in 
the Free Religious movement, 202. 
The happy influence of, 213, 285. 
The method of, 288. The fate of, 
316. Its trust in conscience, 322. 

Trinity, the dogma attacked in Italy, 18 
(note). Omitted by Antoine Corrano, 
19. The theory of, and Coleridge, 64. 
Dean Stanley and Dr. Martineau's 
view of, 66. Unitarian revolt against, 
81, 161. The Vedantine, 277. The 
mystery of, 302, 

Tri-Pitaka, the teachings of, 297, 309. 

Tubingen, The school of, its negative 
criticism, 29. 

Tudor, Mary, The Protestants proscribed 
by, 21. 

Tyndall, Prof., his estimate of the re- 
ligious question, i. The Belfast ad- 
dress of, 46. His sympathy with per- 
secuted Jews, 80. His description of 
Emerson. 172. Influence of, in Amer- 
ica, 214. His conversation with Chun- 
der Mozoumdar, 311. His large views, 

317- 

Tulloch, Principal, the work of referred 
to, 20 (note). 



Underwood, Mrs. Sarah A. , her view of 
religious speculation, 210. 

Underwood, Mr. B. F., an editor of the 
Index, 187. The Agnosticism of, 195. 
His views of the spread of the evolu- 
tion doctrine, 214. 

Unitarian General Conference, held at 
Liverpool and Birmingham, 97. 

Unitarian National Conference in Ame- 
rica, its concession to Universalists, 



186. Messrs. Potter and Abbot's 
secession from, 194-196. 

Unitarianism, Unitarians, Mr. Glad- 
stone's classification of, 4. The origin 
of, 22. Passed through by Coleridge, 
26. The profession of, a blasphemy, 
32. The numbers of, 59. Represented 
at the banquet given to Professor 
Kuenen, 65 (note). The position of, 
67, 77- General description of, 81- 
102. The methods of, 126. The 
growth and character of, in America, 
161 -186. Its relation to the Free Re- 
ligious Association, 194-198, 202. Its 
revolt against orthodox dogmas, 221. 
Rev. W. Adams converted to, 233. 
Chunder Sen's reference to, 277. Its 
relation to Brahmoism, 303. Its un- 
dogmatic church, 313. The advanced, 
315. Their view of Jesus, 322. 

Universalists, The classification of, 4. 
Their doctrine, 77, 161. 

Upanishads, religious readings from, 233, 
235. The authors of, 288. 



Vachaspati Misra, his philosophy, 307. 

Vallabhacarya, a Hindu reformer, 229. 

Vedanta, The Pantheism of, 227. Its 
two doctrines, 233. The adherents of, 
296. 

Vedas, Mr. Conway's extracts from, 221. 
The hymns of, 227. Their esoteric texts, 
234. The direct breath of God, 236. 
Women according to, 249. Chunder 
Sen's reference to, 281. The infalli- 
bility of, 294. The traditions of, 297. 
The treasures in, 309. 

Vicence, an association in Italy, 18. 

Vishnu, Buddha an incarnation of, 228. 
The worshippers of, 229, 231. Per- 
sonifies the world's preservative forces, 
234, 237. Chunder Sen's early worship 
of, 241. Hari, a personification of, 
275. The worship of, 276. The ec- 
lecticism of, 277. 

Voltaire, carries Deism into France, 25. 
His reference to English sects, 57. 
Use of name by Mr. Conway, 126. 
The criticisms of, 209. 

Voysey, Rev. Ch., The Theism of, 3. 
His Church and teaching, 104-113. 



344 



INDEX. 



His retention of prayers for Queen, &c., 
121. His Church compared with Mr. 
Conway's, 127. The isolated position 
of, 315. The large views of, 317. 



Wahabis, a Mussulman sect of recent ori- 
gin, 300, 301. 

Walker, James, The philosophical views 
of 168. 

Wallace, his theory of natural selection, 
37, 38. A representative of English 
science, 317. 

Walters, Rev. F., his address on the pro- 
gress of Rationalism, 79. The views 
of, 92. 

Ware, Dr., his position in Harvard Uni- 
versity, 161. 

Wasson, his fidelity to Transcendent- 
alism, 213. The writings of, 220. 

Watts, Ch.~, The secular liturgy of, 150. 

Webster, Daniel, his position as an ora- 
tor, 181. 

Weiss, John, his Transcendentalism, 174. 
His connection with the Free Religious 
Association, 202. 

Welchman, The heresy of, 82. 

Wesley, John, The influence of, 26. The 
Methodists sprang from, 74. The 
hymns of, 99. The God of, and Mr. 
Voysey's services, 108. 

Wette, De, The writings of, studied, 168. 

Whitfield, The influence of, 26. 



Whittier, The poetry of, 180. 

Wicksteed, Rev. P. H., his translation of 
Dutch works, 91. 

Wightman, The martyrdom of, 19. 

Wilberforce, his connection of Armini- 
anism with Deism, 160. 

Williams, Professor Monier, The opin- 
ions of, referred to, 227, 229, 296, 303 
(notes). His description of Hinduism, 
228. His estimate of Ram Mohun Roy, 
232. 

Williams, Roger, founds the State of 
Rhode Island, 159, 189. 

Williams, Roland, The sincerity of, 68. 

Winnebrenner, John, The followers of, 
205. 

Wise", Rabbi Isaac, his connection with 
the Free Religionists, 202. 

Woolston, The natural Monotheism of, 
24. The loss of his Fellowship, 84. 

Wordsworth, The religiousness of, 143, 
The Transcendentalism of, 168. 

WyclifF, The aspirations of, &c., 16. 



Yoga, The teachings of, 262 (note), 
nature and influence, 305, 306. 



Its 



Zend Avesta, readings borrowed from, 

245. The treasures of, 309. 
Zoroaster, his equality with Moses, &c., 

185. The religion of, 300. 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 



ON 



THE WORK IN THE ORIGINAL. 



LIBRAIRIE EUROPEENNE C. MUQUARDT 

MERZBACH & FALK, EDITEURS 

LIBRARIES DU ROI ET DE S. A, R. LE COMTE DE FLANDRE 
45, RXJE DE LA EEGENCE, A BEUXELLES. 

u Evolution religieuse 

CONTEMPOEAINE 

CHEZ LES ANGLAIS, LES AMERICAINS & LES HINDOUS 

PAR 

Le COMTE GOBLET D'ALVIELLA 

Professeiir d'histoire des religions a rUniversite de Bruxelles 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 

"Will be read with interest both in England and in America." — The Athenaeum. 

"A careful and interesting book." — Saturday Reveiw. 

"His study of the various divisions of religious England was evidently intel- 
ligent, close and lUboxaXJ' ^British Quarterly Review. 

"The best summary of Brahmic history accessible to non-Oriental readers and 
marked throughout by an earnest desire to present a faithful picture of the reality.'^ 
—Miss S. D. Collet, Modern Review. 

"A minute yet vivid picture." —C/iristian Life. 

"Worthy of the highest praise, rich in instruction and very interesting." — 
Inquirer. 

"Elaborate, comprehensive, accurate and impartial." — Rod. Suffield, Chris- 
tian Herald. 

"The first of its V\xv\:' —The Jewish World. 

" The author possesses surprising knowledge." — The Nation, of New York. 

" Strong in statistics and other details, rich in original generalisations and lucid 
conceptions, and singularly tolerant, devout and hopeful in its spirit, the book must 
be read carefully from beginning to end, in order to gain any fair idea of its rare 
merit." — Bostoti Index. 

" Of deep interest to the philanthropist and thinker." — Boston Commonwealth. 

"Lucid, genial, altogether fine and fascinating." — N. Oilman, Christian 
Register. ^^ 



IV. 

* ' A really valuable contribution to the history of modern thought ; especially 
welcome to the Indian reader for the light it throws on the religious evolution 
actually occurring in our midst, but which we, therefore, do not properly appreciate. " 
— Times of India. 

* ' We conclude with the hope that some able writer would translate the book 
into English and unfold its perspicacity and its beauty to everyone of our readers." 
Indian Messenger. 

"Tells us all we want to know on the subject." — The Liberal^ of Calcutta. 

" Les chapitres sur le rationalisme americain et sur le rationalisme hindou, outre 
ce qu'ils contiennent de renseignem.ents qui seront pour le lecteur europeen de 
veritables revelations, sont en meme temps autant de chapitres de critique et de 
philosophic d'une grande portee qui constituent des a present, comme on dit, des 
documents du plus rare interet pour I'histoire religieuse contemporaine." — Revue 
des Deux Mondes. 

" Montre que les questions d'histoire contemporaine, quand on sait se degager 
des passions de parti et les remplacer par la haute curiosite d'un esprit desireux de 
comprendre, prennent un interet et une signification qu'on ne leur soup9onnait pas. 
Cette etude de la religion contemporaine, saisie dans les tressaillements de sa vie 
quotidienn€, est d'une haute portee." — Maurice Vernes, Revue de Vhistoire des 
religions. 

'* C'est, si je ne me trompe, le premier travail d' ensemble qui ait encore ete fait 
sur ce grand mouvement, et il est trace avec une ampleur de lignes, une intelligence 
des nuances, une clarte et une simplicite de vues que la critique religieuse de nos 
jours semblait avoir oubliees." — ^James Darmesteter, Revue critique d'histoire et 
de litterature. 

"Personne ne s'est mieux rendu compte de la gravite de la crise at de I'effet 
produit sur notre generation par les resultats acquis de I'immense mouvement 
scientifique de notre siecle." — E. de PressensS, Revue poliiiqtie et litteraire. 

"Expose avec une lumineuse clarte I'etat religieUx de I'Angleterre et de 
I'Amerique. Aucun ecrivain fran9ais n'a mieux trace, sans confusion, avec un 
ordre logique et facile a retenir, ce tableau charge de tant de details." — E. POUSSET, 
Polybiblion. 

"■ Recit fort instructif." — A. Boyenval, La Reforme sociale. 

"A le rare talent d'exposer brievement, clairement les differents systemes 
philosophiques ou religieux sans les mutiler." — La Renaissance, organe des Eglises 
reformees de France. 

"Impossible de faire preuve de plus d'objectivite, de plus de largeur et d'im- 
partialite." — Albert Reville, Correspond, parisienne de la Flandre liberale. 

" L'impartialite de la critique indique assez que les faits ont ete bien observes 
€t sincerement exposes." — Kov^^a., Jotirnal des Econotnistes. 

"Destine a rendre un grand service a I'oeuvre de synthese et de reconstruction 
apres laquelle, bien que peu d'esprits en aient conscience, I'lmmanite entiere aspire." 
— Ch. Fauvety, Bulletin de la Societe scientifique d etudes psychologiques. 

"Plein de faits, ecrit sans parti pris, avec une grande elevation et dans une 
methode toute scientifique." — La Nouvelle Revue. 

"Tres important ouvrage." — Revue britannique. 

" D'une incontestable utilite." — Journal des Dibats. 

" Du plus haut interet pour tous ceux que preoccupe le meme probleme de la 
conciliation de la religion et de la raison." — Journal de Geneve. 



V. 

" Interessant, riche de faits, d'un style anime." — Gazette de Lausanne. 

" C'est ici un livre pour le grand public, non pas seulement pour les savants." — 
Jean Reville, V Alliance liberale. 

" Sera lu par tous les esprits eleves auxquels I'histoire du rationalisme religieux 
ne peut etre indifferente." — Indcpendance beige. 

" Ce livre est d'une utilite singuliere et dans notre pays il peut rendre de grands 
services." — Flandre liberale. 

"Ouvrage serieux et considerable." — La Gazette. 

*'I1 n'y aura qu'une voix pour admirer la lucidite de I'exposition et la solide 
facture d'un style eminemment approprie a I'expose philosophique et religieux." — 
Echo du Parlement. 

*' Attachant, suggestif, sincere et bien ecrit ; tous ceux qui voient dans I'avenir 
religieux de I'humanite un interet primordial ont quelque chose a y apprendre." — 
Athenceinn beige. 

" Marquera une date dans I'histoire des idees religieuses de notre temps." — 
La Chronique. 

" Dans des voyages reiteres en Angleterre, aux Etats-Unis et aux Indes, I'auteur 
s'est mis en communication avec les chefs des principales sectes religieuses de ces 
pays. Ses observations personnelles lui ont permis de communiquer a son livre cet 
interet vif et piquant d'une description faite d'apres nature." — La Revue catholiqzie. 

" Ce livre est un des meilleurs ouvrages d'histoire religieuse qui aient paru en 
ces dernieres annees. Ecrit dans un style excellent, correct, elegant et d'une tres 
belle allure." — E. de Laveleye, Bzdletin de V Academic royale. 

" Ce qui ressort du livre avec une clarte sans egale c'est que la religion n'est pas 
par essence refractaire au progres." — H. Pergameni, VAvenir. 

" Par son attrait de nouveaute, par le talent d'exposition de I'auteur, par I'ele- 
vation et la sincerite de pensee qui y eclatent a chaque page, il laissera une trace 
profonde." — La Meuse. 

" Quel tableau instructif, attrayant ! '''—Journal de Liege. 

"Oeuvre d'un ecrivain et d'un penseur." — Organe de Mons. 

"Tous ont quelque chose a apprendre dans ce livre." — Gazette de Charleroi. 

" Tres-interessant ouvrage," — Professor C. P. Ti'&'LE., Manuel de Phistoire des 
Religions, 2eme edition. 

" Beau livre." — A. Earth, Bulletin des Religions de Plnde, 1885. 

" Pages eloquentes." — Professor J. Bonet-Maury, Etude sur Akbar. 

" Man darf das hohe Verdienst des Verfassers nicht verkennen." — Allg. Zeitung 
des Judenthtans. 

" Alle Schilderungen bieten uns deshalb ebenso zuverlassiges als schwerzugang- 
liches material fiir die neueste Kirchengeschichte. — Literarischen Centralbldtter." 

"La erudicion del libro es vasta y el talento conque esta escrito inne gable." — 
Revista Contemporanea, de Madrid. 

" Rivela grande attitudine, ingegno e studio non commune." — B. Labanca, 
La Cultura, de Rome. 

" Een merkwaardig boek." — Het Vaderland, de La Haye. 



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